Writing I Unit I: Paragraph Foundations

Writing I — Unit I

Subject: Writing I
UbD Unit Design | 20 hours | Initial–A2 CEFR

🎯 Stage 1 — Desired Results

A. Established Goals

Students will:

Apply the writing process—prewriting, drafting, and revising—to create and organize brief expository and descriptive texts in English at an A2 CEFR level.
Organize ideas into clear paragraphs using basic sentence structures, punctuation, connectors, and paragraph organization.
Write about familiar topics connected to personal background, daily routines, and campus/university life.
Use graphic organizers and other planning strategies to develop and organize ideas before writing.
When authorized by the teacher, use GenAI only to understand model texts, activate prior knowledge, explore A2 vocabulary, brainstorm, and plan writing.
Maintain full authorship of submitted writing. GenAI may not be used to generate sentences or paragraphs for submission, and any authorized AI use must be documented.

B. Transfer Goals

Students will independently use their learning to:

Use a writing process to plan, draft, review, and improve short texts in English in new academic and everyday situations.
Organize ideas so that a reader can easily understand the main idea and supporting information.
Communicate information about familiar experiences, routines, people, and places using clear A2-level English.
Make responsible decisions about learning tools, including GenAI, while keeping ownership of their ideas and writing.

C. Meaning

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that …

Good writing usually develops through a process; writers plan, draft, review, and improve their work rather than expecting the first draft to be final.
A clear paragraph helps the reader by presenting ideas in an organized way around a central idea.
Basic connectors and punctuation help show relationships between ideas and make writing easier to understand.
Writers can use different planning strategies and graphic organizers to develop the same core writing skills.
Familiar experiences such as personal background, routines, and university life can provide meaningful material for clear descriptive and expository writing.
GenAI can support thinking and planning, but it should not replace the thinking or writing of the student. The writer remains responsible for choosing ideas and producing the text.

Essential Questions

How can I organize my ideas so another person can understand my message?
How does the writing process help me improve a paragraph?
How do sentences, connectors, and punctuation make my writing clearer?
How can I use my own experiences to write meaningful descriptive and expository texts?
How can GenAI help me prepare to write without doing the writing for me?

D. Acquisition

Students will know …

Vocabulary and common language for discussing:
- introductions and personal background;
- daily routines; and
- campus and university life.
Basic sentence types and the functions of common punctuation marks.
The basic organization of a paragraph, including:
- a main or topic idea;
- supporting ideas;
- basic connectors; and
- an appropriate closing idea.
Ways of using graphic organizers to plan and organize information.
The stages of the writing process:
- prewriting;
- drafting; and
- revising.
Basic features of descriptive writing and the paragraph forms addressed during Unit I.
That the Unit I syllabus also includes practice with narrative and descriptive paragraphs.
The permitted uses of GenAI in Unit I: understanding models, brainstorming, activating prior knowledge, exploring A2 vocabulary, and planning.
That authorized GenAI use must be documented by recording the tool, date, prompts, and ideas accepted, adapted, or rejected.

Students will be able to …

Identify important parts of a model paragraph, including the topic/main idea, supporting ideas, connectors, and closing idea.
Generate ideas about familiar personal and university-related topics.
Select relevant ideas and organize them using a graphic organizer.
Use basic sentence structures and punctuation appropriately.
Connect related ideas using basic connectors.
Draft a brief A2-level descriptive or expository text about a familiar topic.
Review their own writing for meaning, organization, punctuation, and basic language use.
Revise a draft to make the message clearer and better organized.
Participate in peer review and use appropriate feedback to improve a text.
Explain their own writing choices.
When GenAI has been authorized, evaluate AI-generated ideas and decide which ideas to accept, adapt, or reject before independently writing their text.

UDL is embedded in these outcomes by allowing students to approach content through model texts, teacher modeling, connector guides, dictionaries, graphic organizers, digital resources, and collaborative work. Students can select familiar topics and use different forms of planning—for example, a concept map, table, sequence organizer, outline, or handwritten/digital organizer—while the essential assessed construct remains the student’s ability to produce their own written English.

🎯 Stage 2 — Evidence

A. Performance Task (GRASPS)

Goal

Create a clear, organized, student-authored A2-level text about your life as a university student, using the writing process to develop and improve your ideas.

The text will communicate descriptive and/or explanatory information about a syllabus-supported topic such as:

your personal background;
your daily routine; or
your campus/university life.

Role

You are a new university student and English writer sharing information about yourself and your experience.

Audience

Your classmates and teacher.

Situation

You are beginning your university experience and becoming part of a new learning community. Your classmates come with different backgrounds, routines, and experiences. You will use English to communicate something meaningful about yourself or your university life in a way that your classmates can understand.

You will not simply write a final paragraph immediately. You will use the writing process to develop the text: first organizing your ideas, then drafting, reviewing, and revising them.

Students may select from the familiar Unit I topics, supporting engagement through meaningful choice without changing the writing skills being assessed.

Product/Performance

Students will submit evidence of a writing process that includes:

Prewriting/planning using a graphic organizer or another teacher-approved organizational format.
A student-written draft.
Evidence of review and revision.
A revised A2-level descriptive or expository text using appropriate basic sentences, punctuation, connectors, and paragraph organization.
When GenAI was authorized and used, a brief AI-use record identifying:
- the tool;
- date;
- prompts used;
- ideas accepted, adapted, or rejected.

Planning can be completed using different visual or organizational formats, and students may use model texts, dictionaries, connector guides, and teacher/peer support. These UDL options reduce barriers to planning and comprehension without changing the central performance requirement: the final English text must be written by the student.

GenAI may support comprehension, vocabulary exploration, brainstorming, or planning only with teacher authorization. Students may not ask GenAI to write sentences or paragraphs that are submitted as their own work.

Standards/Rubric (summary)

Purpose and meaning: The writing communicates a clear message about the selected familiar topic and provides relevant supporting information.
Organization: Ideas are organized around a clear central idea and follow an understandable sequence.
Sentence and punctuation control: The student uses basic sentence structures and punctuation with enough control for the reader to understand the message.
Connectors and cohesion: Basic connectors help show relationships among ideas.
Language control — A2: Vocabulary and structures are appropriate to the student’s developing A2 level. The syllabus specifies that English use represents 50% of the grade for each evaluated item.
Writing process: Planning, drafting, reviewing, and revising are visible in the submitted evidence.
Independent authorship: The content and language of the submitted text reflect the student’s own writing and decisions.
Responsible GenAI use: When GenAI is used, its use stays within the Unit I permissions and is transparently documented. The student can explain what was accepted, changed, or rejected.
Originality: Submitted work follows the syllabus requirement of 90–100% originality and reflects the student’s authentic voice.

B. Other Evidence

Weekly writing tasks involving personal background, daily routines, and campus/university life.
Short sentence-building activities focusing on basic sentence types and punctuation.
Identification of the main/topic idea, supporting ideas, connectors, and closing idea in model paragraphs. Students may use visual annotation, teacher modeling, collaborative identification, or—when explicitly authorized—GenAI-assisted model analysis.
Graphic-organizer activities in which students generate, select, group, and sequence ideas before writing.
Short descriptive paragraph practice and, consistent with the Unit I content list, narrative paragraph practice.
Draft-to-revision comparisons that show how the student improved organization, clarity, punctuation, or connectors.
Peer-feedback and collaborative writing workshops, with structured criteria appropriate to A2 learners.
Self-assessment and reflection on writing progress, including what students can do independently and what they still need to practice.
Brief reflection on any authorized GenAI use, especially the student’s reasons for accepting, adapting, or rejecting ideas generated during brainstorming or planning.
Participation in individual, pair, and group activities using course-supported resources such as model texts, graphic organizers, connector guides, dictionaries, notebooks, Microsoft Teams, Capacities, and CAADI materials.

Benjamin L. Stewart

Explorer