What is a Guided Essay?
NoRedInk's Guided Essay is designed to provide students with the scaffolding and support they’ll need as they draft a full-length essay, providing examples and topics as they write. This frees up time for teachers to provide more individualized instruction as well!
💡 Need support with paragraph writing? Check out this article to learn about our Guided Short Response assignments!
Assigning a Guided Essay
You can select the type of essay to assign and browse our library of prompts for each genre in the Assignment Library. Alternatively, you can create custom prompts for your students to use for their drafts. Ready to assign? Take a look at this article to learn how to assign a Guided Essay!
Not only can you add a custom prompt, but you can also customize the essay’s rubric items, providing additional lessons and tips to students to help guide their writing around areas you’d like them to focus on. To learn more, review our article about how to customize your rubric!
Student experience
While they are writing, our Guided Essay provides students with tailored support throughout the drafting process based on the specific genre you selected.
Curious about what your students see during this assignment? Check out our article about what students experience while writing a Guided Essay to learn more.
Grading a Guided Essay
Once students have submitted their work, you’ll be able to leave targeted feedback by highlighting specific parts of the students' writing, leave comments about specific rubric criteria, submit a grade, or even request additional revisions by sending it back to the student.
Want a deeper dive into the grading experience? Read this article to learn more about grading a Guided Essay!
Best Practices and Tips
- Help students brainstorm ideas on their own with Quick Writes and our printable pre-writing resources. If you want to give students feedback on their ideas before they start drafting, set the Quick Write due date before the start date for the Guided Essay.
-
Take advantage of NoRedInk's pre-made resources for Guided Essays!
- Use our sample two-week essay plans.
- Share student resources with your class, such as this introduction video and our student tips handout.