Discovering the Path to Independent Writing
Ideal for Intermediate Grades
Discover the creativity and fun of writing by making each of your students an official Writing Explorer! Challenge students to think outside the box and develop writing strategies to guide them.
The Explorer Writing Program gets students writing all different types of writing everyday. The more students write, the better they understand the writing process. The Explorer products (formerly the Original Series) teach students how to improve writing content – better opening sentences, sentence variety, transition words, organized and coherent stories, detailed paragraphs, better word choice. Anchoring this program is our Writing Works book which is filled with creative, off-the-wall writing activities designed to take 5-60 minutes per day. The Explorer Portfolio guides students to writing independence by teaching them to revise their own work for content and spelling. Keep writing fun with the use of the Writing lanyards and Explorer Passport... challenge your students to explore all types of writing!
The Explorer Classroom Set
The Explorer Classroom Set is designed to create a unique atmosphere for developing writers that encourages and teaches writing skills and strategies. This product set creates a classroom environment that makes writing fun for students and for teachers. Everything you need to teach writing for the entire year is included.
- Writing Works Activities Book
- Explorer Writing Portfolios
- Explorer Passport Booklets
- Woody Writes Activity Cards Set
- Explorer Expeditions Board Game
- Worn-Out Words Poster
- Transition Words Poster
- 4 Explorer Achievement Pads
- 30 Lanyards and Passport Sleeves
- Passport Stamper
- The Complete Teacher Resource Guide and Product Manual with ready-to-copy pullouts and transparencies
| Explorer Classroom Set | $339.95 |
The Explorer Grade Level Set
This set includes four Explorer Classroom Sets
| Explorer Grade Level Set | $1,199.95 |
Writing Works
The Best Selling Book by Alma Hoffmann
Turn to a new page each day to reveal three new writing activities to stimulate students' ideas and thought processes. These activities are designed to work together or separately and are proven to motivate student writing. Writing Works is 100 pages filled with creative, intriguing, off-the-wall writing ideas integrating many science, social studies and math themes.
The Quick-Thinking Activity is designed to take 4-6 minutes. Its purpose is to get students to quickly focus on a topic and generate as many ideas as possible.
The Journal Activity is designed to take 8-12 minutes. Students use the ideas generated during the Quick-Thinking Activity and develop them into complete sentences and thoughts.
The Creative Writing Activity is designed to take 30-45 minutes. Students use the ideas and thoughts from the first two activities to develop a story.
| Writing Works Book | $13.95 |
Explorer Writing Portfolio
You will want one of these brightly colored 9”x12” pocketed folders for each of your students. The Portfolio is designed to guide students as they organize and develop their ideas into stories. Once students have learned how to use this Portfolio, they move closer to becoming independent writers. The Portfolio focuses on eight areas, each designed to teach ways to take their writing from rough draft to ready-to-publish. Sections include:
- Write More Setting
- Write More Beginnings
- Write More Detailed
- Write More Connected
- Write More Correctly
- Write More Descriptive
- Write More Polished
- Write More Accurately
The pockets are designed to hold the students’ rough drafts, Organizers, Conference Record, and more.
| Five-Pack | $15.95 | |
| Box of 50 | $99.95 |
Explorer Teacher Resource Guide and Product Manual
This all-inclusive teacher manual will provide teaching instruction, hints, suggestions and ideas to enhance and complete your writing curriculum. The sturdy 3-ring binder protects your reproducible pullouts and allows you to move things around and to add materials easily. Instructions for using all of the Explorer Write More products are found in this teacher guide and are easy to read so you can begin using them immediately. You will find many uses for our ready-to-copy pullouts as you use them in all subject areas. Included you will find:
- Writing Works Guide
- Explorer Portfolio Guide
- Everyday Organizer Guide
- Write More Rubric Guide
- My Conference Record Guide
- Explorer Poster Guide
- Explorer Board Game and Woody Writes Guide
- Explorer Passport Program Guide
- Everyday Organizer reproducible pullout and transparency
- Write More Rubric reproducible pullout and transparency
- My Conference Record reproducible pullout
- Decorative Border reproducible pullouts
- Much, much more!
The Explorer Teacher Guide is not for sale, but is included with the Explorer Classroom Set
Everyday Organizer
Use this organizer to guide your students as they think through their writing ideas. The organizer can be used to teach how to write a complete paragraph or story. The student charts his main idea, the three supporting sentences or paragraphs and three details or adjectives for each sentence or paragraph. This organizer helps students see the progression of a paragraph or story and see that each part needs supporting details.
This is a great tool for integrating with social studies and science research reports.
Everyday Organizer Reproducible Pullout Included in the Explorer Teacher Guide
| Pad of 50 Sheets | $4.95 | |
| 5 Pads | $23.95 |
Everyday Organizer Overhead Transparency
| 5-Pack | $14.95 | |
| 20-Pack | $49.95 |
My Conference Record
This useful record sheet is designed for the student to take notes of each writing conference with the teacher. The record allows the student to note the following:
- The date of each conference
- The topic or title of the writing assignment
- Areas to add details to the writing or areas it may need to be shortened
- Any other suggestions discussed during this conference that need to be addressed before the student writes his final draft.
This record is to be kept in each student's Portfolio for easy reference.
My Conference Reproducible Pullout included in the Explorer Teacher Guide
| Pad of 50 Sheets | $4.95 | |
| 5 Pads | $23.95 |
Write More Rubric
This rubric pad is designed to use over and over again and to customize for each writing assignment. A rubric is a checklist of important objectives students should include in their writing. Different types of writing assignments focus on different objectives. On this rubric, there are sixteen objectives listed. Pick 5-8 of these objectives at a time for students’ writing.
This rubric design teaches students to take ownership of their writing by self-selecting the objectives they will focus on in their story. Students also determine the point value to be assigned to each objective. Deciding how many points each objective should be worth is a huge teaching moment! Guide students as they think through think process.
Grading student writing is not as subjective or hard when you use this rubric.
Write More Rubric Reproducible Pullout included in the Explorer Teacher Guide
| Pad of 50 Sheets | $4.95 | |
| 5 Pads | $23.95 |
Explorer Rubric Overhead Transparency
| 5-Pack | $14.95 | |
| 20-Pack | $49.95 |
Types of Writing Pad
Help your students track each type of writing they create. This pad lists sixteen different types of writing and allows your students to track the date when each writing assignment was accomplished. Have each student keep this sheet in his portfolio at all times to ensure he is doing a variety of writing.
| Pad of 50 Sheets | $4.95 | |
| 5 Pads | $23.95 |
Transition Words and Phrases Poster
Flow, writing, flow! Teach students to make their writing more cohesive by incorporating transition words and phrases from this poster. Transition words help a writer flow from one thought to another with style. Transition words connect new paragraphs to old paragraphs.
Transition words and phrases also make a writing sound more mature. Encourage students to listen for transition words and phrases in their favorite books and stories.
While students are revising a rough draft, challenge them to use one or two words or phrases from this poster.
| Transition Words Poster | $6.95 |
Worn-Out Words Poster
Break free from the boring overused words of your past! Explore new worlds of meaning and imaging by incorporating words from this poster into your writing.
Encourage students to enliven their writing by choosing more exact, precise words. This outstanding writing tool inspires your students to expand their writing with new and creative verbs, adverbs and adjectives. It’s time to put those worn-out words to rest!
| Worn-Out Words Poster | $6.95 |
Achievement Pads
Reward your students for writing improvement with these quick and easy-to-use achievement pads. Positive reinforcement encourages students to keep working hard and improving their writing skills and strategies. Find something positive in a student’s writing and make note of it on a page from this pad.
Each sheet has been designed so that your students can color, decorate and personalize it. It will be a masterpiece on their home refrigerator and a source of encouragement!
| 5-Pack Achievement Pads | $14.95 | |
| 20-Pack Achievement Pads | $54.95 |
Explorer Passport Program
Stamp on! You and your students are off to explore all types of writing with this unique writing incentive program. The Explorer Passport is a 3"x4" book with 10 different types of writing destinations – personal and imaginative narrative, descriptive, persuasive, point of view, poetry, instructions, letters, directions and journal entries. Each page highlights a different type of writing and gives students four boxes to stamp that they have completed this type of writing. The wooden stamper says Project Complete and students will be eager to use it to signify that they have worked hard and earned another stamp!
Writing Explorers will proudly carry their passports in the bright blue plastic sleeve attached to a blue lanyard. The Explorer Passport and lanyard will get students in the writing mood and motivate students to work to complete a rough draft so they can stamp their passport page. Your students can wear their lanyards and passports to special assemblies, to an Author's Tea or anywhere they want to show off their hard work!
Explorer Passports
| 5-Pack Passports | $12.95 | |
| 20-Pack Passports | $49.95 |
Passport Stamper
| Passport Stamper | $17.95 |
Explorer Passport Lanyard and Sleeve
| 5-Pack Lanyard/Sleeve | $14.95 | |
| 20-Pack Lanyard/Sleeve | $54.95 |
Explorer Expeditions Board Game
Spin some creativity! This unique, colorful game is designed to teach students to creatively incorporate descriptive words into a sentence. Older students need to write with more precise detail. Shorter sentences with exact words are more interesting to read than long, boring sentences. This game will teach students that nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs can be descriptive and exact.
On the game board, there are 6 nouns, 5 adjectives and 5 verbs. There are also 11 adverbs listed in the corner of the game board. Encourage students to try to use one of these adverbs in each sentence they create.
There are numerous fun ways for students to benefit from this game.
| Expeditions Board Game | $12.95 |
Explorer Woody Writes Set
Explorer Woody Writes are a series of quick, fun activities designed to get students generating writing ideas. Eighteen activity cards are teamed with our plush Woody Pencilman to create an exciting and unique method for learning writing skills. Each activity can be done orally or it can be a writing or drawing activity for students to do alone or with a friend.
Use the cards many times so that students get more comfortable with the activities and encourage more and more detail each time an activity is repeated.
| Explorer Woody Writes Set (plush and cards) | $19.95 | |
| Explorer Woody Writes Cards | $9.95 | |
| 9" Plush Woody Pencilman | $12.95 |
The Explorer Limited Edition Classroom Set
The Explorer Limited Edition Classroom Set includes a line of Explorer curriculum writing products. The set consists of the Writing Works Book, 30 Writing Portfolios, a Write More Organizer Pad and Transparency, a Types of Writing Pad, a Conferencing Pad, a Write More Rubric Pad, two Decorative Border Writing Pads and the Limited Edition Teacher Resource Guide.
| Explorer Limited Edition Classroom Set | $99.95 |
The Explorer Limited Edition Grade Level Set
The Explorer Edition Grade Level Set includes all that your school will need for up to four classrooms. This set includes four Writing Works Books, 120 Writing Portfolios, four Write More Organizer Pads and Transparencies, four Types of Writing Pads, four Conferencing Pads, four Write More Rubric Pads, eight Decorative Border Writing Pads and four Limited Edition Teacher Resource Guides.
| Explorer Limited Edition Grade Level Set | $349.95 |
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For more information, please email us or call (888) WRITE 11 x114.
