The Formative Writing Framework ​

​​​​WestEd’s Formative Writing Framework is a dynamic writing instruction and assessment system that empowers educators to align resources and writing instruction with the cognitive demands of state or district literacy standards and assessments. Through engaging writing performance tasks that mirror the structures, formats, and genre balance found in high-stakes assessments, students are prepared for real-world academic challenges.​​​

How We Help

The Formative Writing Framework begins with a comprehensive needs assessment to identify your site’s strengths, challenges, resources, and goals. Using longitudinal writing data from state- and district-level literacy assessments, we facilitate collaborative strategic planning and resource alignment focused on improving student writing outcomes and overall ELA proficiency performance from Year 1.

We collaborate with your team to design or adopt a library of writing performance tasks and K–12 standards-aligned scoring rubrics that accurately reflect your state and district assessments, providing students with iterative yearlong practice in writing in the actual assessment environment. Teachers are supported with adaptable resources—including a Lesson Planner Flipbook, FWF Coaching and Lesson Planning App, Anchor Charts, Graphic Organizers, and AI scoring tools—to supplement and strengthen your existing curriculum as needed in preparing students to be strong writers.

Educators participate in cycles of collaborative, calibrated student work analysis and leverage AI-assisted tools to analyze and score student work. In-classroom model lesson labs and technology-enhanced planning, led by your WestEd Site Coach, ensure effective instructional practices and targeted support for every student.

Service Delivery

• Onsite, virtual, or hybrid

Who Will Benefit

• Coaches 
• English language arts teachers, K–12 
• Teacher leaders and instructional coaches, K–12 
• School and district administrators 

Connecting Research With Practice

The Formative Writing Framework was developed in response to the work of Graham and Hebert for the Carnegie Corporation report on the correlation between writing and reading comprehension scores, Shanahan and Fitzgerald’s work on disciplinary literacy and the impact of writing, the work of Moats and Foorman on the impact of reintroduction of focused writing instruction into literacy curricula, and a meta-analysis of impacts on national literacy proficiencies by the National Center for Educational Statistics for NAEP.