The Writing Process Doesn’t Have to Be a Mystery: A Clear Path for Grades 3–6

Bridget
Jul 8
4 min read

If your students groan when you announce it’s time for writing, you’re not alone. Writing often feels like a chaotic whirlwind—for both students and teachers. But the good news? It doesn’t have to.

In this post, I’m breaking down the writing process into five manageable stages that actually make sense for the upper elementary classroom. Whether you're working with 3rd graders or 6th graders, these strategies will help you simplify writing instruction, build student confidence, and—most importantly—make writing feel doable.

Why the Writing Process Feels So Messy

Let’s be real—writing isn’t linear. But we often teach it as if it is. Many students try to write everything in one go and turn it in. Meanwhile, we’re juggling time constraints, curriculum pacing guides, and every interruption under the sun.

That’s why so many students (and teachers!) get stuck. We rush. We skip steps. And then we wonder why writing feels frustrating.

But when we slow down and teach each stage with intention, everything starts to click.

The 5 Stages of Writing—Simplified

Let’s break the process into five classroom-friendly chunks:

1. Prewriting

This is where the real magic happens. And honestly? It’s where the most instruction should occur. Students need time to generate ideas, build story elements, and decide on a clear focus. Think brainstorming webs, character maps, and focus on setting. Prewriting reduces cognitive overload so students can actually write later on.

The more students have an opportunity to orally tell their students, process their thinking, and organize the events/ details, the easier it will be for them to write.

2. Writing

Here’s where students transfer their ideas into sentences and paragraphs. But don’t expect this to take the bulk of your block. With strong prewriting, writing becomes much smoother. Model how to move from organizer to draft—and let students write without the pressure of perfection.

Here are some images of how I would model for my own learners. I used my ipad and Notability. I would split my screen with the organizer and have a Google Doc open to model how to write.

Remember, you do not need to show students everything! Consider writing some parts out ahead of time and leaving some elements for you to use at your write aloud. Before you get started, ask students about what they notice about what you have already written.

3. Revising

Focus here is on ideas—not grammar. Use checklists, color-coding, and revision stations to help students improve clarity, vocabulary, and flow. A simple acronym like ARMS (Add, Remove, Move, Substitute) helps make revising actionable.

This may be a time where you have to go back to the drawing board and begin planning. This is especially a good time to incorporate introduction, conclusions, figurative language and more details in character/ plot development.

4. Editing

Now it’s time for the polish—punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and grammar. This is where peer editing routines and CUPS (Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling) come in handy.

One format that I enjoy is peer editing but it needs to be heavily instructed so that students are aware of the expectations. One year, I took my class and divided them into three groups. Once in their groups I had students stand in a circle with their papers. They then were told to pass it so many spaces from left to right, eventually landing where they had someone else’s paper in their hand.

After they edited, they came back together and had a discussion sharing a positive and a growth for what they read. It was a great way to share ideas as a group and grow as writers!

5. Publishing

This doesn’t need to be a fancy display board. Reading their work aloud, turning it into a class book, or typing it up can be just as meaningful. For my class, we ALWAYS ended our writing unit with a publishing party.

We had one day which we called our Author’s Publishing Party. We would have popcorn and walk around enjoying the writing of our peers. Students would leave comments about the writing (this was talked about and modeled) so when everyone returned to their seats they had a lot of beautiful comments surrounding their papers.