Reimagining Immersion

Catch Up Quick

A Quick Catch Up

In August’s Unboxing Fresh Routines blog series, Stacey Shubitz shared a post on planning for Immersion Days. She highlighted the importance of carving out time at the start of a writing unit for immersion- dedicated time to study mentor texts so students can build a vision for the work ahead.

One Small Shift (or Addition)

Back in 2022, I wrote about some experimentation our school was doing with the immersion phase of the writing process in my post, Writing: A Creative Process. After reviewing end-of-year writing across our primary grades, we noticed patterns: students’ writing pieces often lacked clear structure and overall volume was down. This led our team to wonder, what might happen if we placed more emphasis on the planning phase of the writing process? Our solution was to build in three to five days of immersion work, including shared writing experiences.

What Is Shared Writing?
Shared writing is an instructional practice in which the teacher and students collaboratively compose a piece. The teacher acts as the scribe, recording the text while modeling the thinking, decision-making, and craft moves of a writer. Students actively contribute ideas, while the teacher guides, scaffolds, and demonstrates strategies. The result is a co-created text that reflects the group’s collective thinking and serves as a model students can return to during independent writing.

Since 2022, incorporating shared writing into the immersion phase has become a staple across our school, expanding from primary grades to upper grades as well. Embedding shared writing at the start of a unit offers many benefits, including:

• Giving teachers clarity around the genre of study before diving into a unit
  
• Providing space to target skills or parts of the writing process students may need extra support with
  
• Helping students create a clear vision of the work they’ll take on
  
• Producing a co-created mentor text that can be revisited throughout the unit
  

The Details

Planning: Beginning a unit with shared writing allows teachers to emphasize the planning process. It’s an ideal time to show students how to organize ideas in ways that fit the genre they are studying. This is also an opportunity to analyze mentor texts together.

Keep This Work Active: As a literacy coach, I often reflect on who is doing the work in our classrooms. I encourage teachers to give students more opportunities to “do the heavy lifting”-more time to practice. This might look like:

• Providing frequent opportunities for students to discuss how different parts of their writing might go. For example: “Turn and tell your partner how you would start this next section.”
  
• Embedding the language of the genre. Introduce key transitional phrases and encourage students to try them throughout the process.
  

Model a Growth Mindset: Shared writing is also a chance to model all parts of the writing process, including navigating challenges. Teachers can demonstrate strategies for generating ideas, working through writer’s block, and revising to continuously improve a piece.

The Bottom Line

Adding shared writing to the immersion phase doesn’t just give students a model to follow; it gives them a voice in the creation process. By dedicating time at the start of a unit to co-create, study mentor texts, and practice the craft together, teachers set students up for greater independence, clearer understanding of the genre, and stronger writing outcomes.