At times you may wonder if it will all come together in a way that will allow you to really individualize your instruction and have time to conference with everyone. There are days when you observe some of the students responding in ways that make you want to continue your quest for the best way of teaching writing. If most of the boxes you checked are in the Novice column, writing is not an integral part of your classroom instruction. Although creative writing may have a slot in you timetable, it does not occupy a regular and significant part of your time. Student writing is rarely shared by students with the rest of the class.
Students usually do their writing independently, rather than working with other students.
Skills instruction is an important part of your language arts instruction, and it is conducted separately from the writing events. Generally speaking, you rely on basal readers or an anthology for most of your reading instruction. You may accompany your basal program with work sheets which occupy a portion of the language arts time. Students may check-out library books for free time reading, or to take home, but they are not used as an important part of the reading program. Evaluation usually takes the form of a mark or grade for a piece of work.