Lessons include practice with essential nonfiction writing forms:

• Compare and contrast
• Sequence
• Explanatory
• Informative
• Cause and effect
• Opinion
• Argument

12 leveled nonfiction texts range from levels V to Y and include:

• Biographies
• Health articles
• Science articles
• Social studies articles

Units provide reading comprehension guidance and pre-writing tasks that prepare students to complete text-dependent writing prompts.

Each unit begins with a unit focus and lesson checklist to guide students through the learning path, which includes:

• directed reading strategies
• a dictionary page that introduces content words
• close reading of a leveled nonfiction article
• text-dependent comprehension questions to support understanding
• a graphic organizer to help students organize information from the article and plan their writing
• a text-dependent writing prompt

Additional resources and features for teachers include:

• Texts across the curriculum that range from reading levels V to Y
• A suggested teaching path that helps teachers pace the lesson and provide scaffolded instruction
• A student rubric that focuses on the 6 traits of writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions
• Vocabulary and definitions list
• A lesson objective and content-area concept for each unit