The Pathway gives teachers...

A scope & sequence for teaching writing that works with any curriculum—as well as a common language to guide the teaching of writing.

A comprehensive collection of lessons that prioritize the highest-leverage strategies and best practices in writing instruction.

AI-powered tools that create practice for students in the content they are learning with the click of a button. Students get more writing practice and teachers save planning time.

A group of young students writing in their notebooks

Flexible lesson sequence that fits into your curriculum

The Pathway is organized into 5 categories which begin with basic sentence construction (including grammar), and complex sentences, and progress to paragraphs and multi-paragraph writing in the key genres of informational, persuasive, argumentative, and narrative writing. The topics and the lessons within them have a defined sequence, but that sequence is highly flexible. The Pathway is designed to be an overlay onto ANY 3rd through 12th-grade curriculum or content—if you teach it, you can use the Writing Pathway with it!

Check out all the Pathway skills you can teach in our skills library.

Our Mission

To improve the writing instruction and practice students receive without increasing the amount of preparation time for teachers

Making it easier to teach writing

Teaching writing is challenging. Although teachers are asked to assign writing regularly and students must write on high-stakes assessments, when it comes to teaching writing, most curricula lack structured guidance for teachers, and consistent approaches across subjects and grades rarely exist. The Writing Pathway addresses this by offering a coherent, research-backed writing skills progression for grades 3 to 12, adaptable to any curriculum. Developed with expert input and teacher collaboration, the Pathway’s continuous updates and regular AI tool expansions ensure it meets the evolving needs of classrooms.

An innovative approach

For too long, our students have struggled with writing. Writing is one of the most important skills students should acquire and develop during K-12 schooling, yet just one out of four grade 8 students performed at or above proficient on the last national test of writing (NAEP 2011). Teachers are not prepared to teach writing, writing instruction is inconsistent and often ineffective, and too often, only takes place in the English classroom. Traditionally, our schools have missed the opportunity to leverage writing as the incredible tool for thinking and learning it is. Research also points to the importance of continuous sentence-level practice and explicit and scaffolded instruction from basic writing skills to paragraphs and essays. Incorporating these approaches, the Pathway enhances overall learning and builds students' confidence, aiming not just for high test scores but for supporting students to become adaptable, effective communicators through a unified, school-wide writing strategy.

The Team

The Writing Pathway is a part of Teaching Lab’s Innovation Studio

Phil Weinberg

Senior Advisor and Managing Director

Phil was formerly the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning for the New York City Department of Education, the nation's largest school system. A New York City educator for 35 years, he spent 27 years at the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Brooklyn as an English teacher, assistant principal, and the school's principal for 13 years. He holds degrees and certificates from Swarthmore College, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Hunter College. He is the recipient of the Sloan Public Service Award, awarded to New York City civil servants whose work goes above and beyond the call of duty. He lives in Brooklyn.

Sherry Lewkowicz

Senior Director

Sherry has over 15 years of experience crafting learning opportunities related to writing instruction. Sherry began her career teaching high school English at The Marble Hill School for International Studies in the Bronx, New York. She then served as Director of Certification and a senior faculty member at The Writing Revolution. Most recently, Sherry was a Professional Learning Manager at Quill.org, where she led a research study of Quill's newest literacy tool. Sherry is passionate about effective writing instruction and its potential to empower students, as well as teachers. She holds an M.A.T. from Brown University and lives with her son and daughter in New York City.

Steve Graham

Research Advisor

Steve Graham is the Regent and Warner Professor in the Division of Leadership and Innovation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. For more than 30 years, he has studied how writing develops, how to teach it effectively, and how writing can be used to support reading and learning. In recent years, he has been involved in the development and testing of digital tools for supporting writing and reading through a series of grants from the Institute of Educational Sciences and the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. His research involves typically developing writers and students with special needs in both elementary and secondary schools, with much of that occurring in classrooms in urban schools.

Shaping the future of writing education