Increase writing practice and develop skilled & confident writers
Illuminate Students' Thinking with Ink!
We believe that a well-rounded writing process is the cornerstone of academic success for our middle school students. Our cutting-edge platform transforms the traditional stages of prewriting, drafting, proofreading, and revision into a seamless, pedagogically sound experience. With Ink, every keystroke becomes a step towards amplified thinking.
Plan
Before the "ink" hits the page, students dive into a prewriting adventure. Our platform sparks critical thinking with interactive prompts, mind-mapping tools, and multimedia resources.
Write
With Ink, students become master architects of ideas. Ink's revolutionary approach fuels engagement, differentiates support, and empowers students to think critically while crafting their ideas.
Revise
Our revision process has two critical components: proofreading and Collaborative Peer Review Workshops. Students learn how to read as writers as they work to improve each other's writing.
Review
Ink provides educators and students with comprehensive insights and instant, personalized feedback. Effortlessly track progress, differentiate learning, and work toward writing goals, together.
Personalized & Timely Feedback
Providing writing feedback to middle school students in a timely manner is challenging. On average, it takes teachers 10-20 hours to grade and write comments on students' papers. With Ink, you can deliver detailed, personalized feedback in less than a minute. The feedback is not only timely, it is directly related to the lesson outcomes and standards.
- deliver kind, kid-friendly feedback for every criteria in the rubric.
- differentiate your feedback based on what individual students need and instantly translate the feedback for your students learning English.
- offer carefully crafted comments that directly reference your students' writing.
- provide detailed comments for all students, and celebrate students, identify growth opportunities, and set goals for each student.
- produce language frames and possible rewrite suggestions to help students grow as writers.
How it works:
Auto-Graded Writing Practice
We grade your students' writing. It's that simple. Our revolutionary technology has made it possible for us to grade writing like you would grade writing with rubric scores and feedback. Teachers can focus on coaching and supporting the writing process while we take grading off of your plate! Don't worry, you can still read your students' work, but you don't have to spend your nights and weekends evaluating it.
- assign writing multiple times a month without spending 100s of hours grading it.
- lead students through a standards-based writing process.
- ask students to practice short, skill-based writing tasks.
- build your own writing tasks or assign one from our writing assignment library.
- keep track of how well your students are meeting writing standards like integrating sources into their own writing.
- engage students in various writing types that require specific techniques and structures.
- develop students' writing fluency.
How it works:
Auto Proofreader
Our team of curriculum writers have a combined 80 years of classroom teaching experience. When teaching writing, we notice that students spend very little time proofreading their writing before turning it in for evaluation. We realize that proofreading needs to happen, but we don't want to add this extra step to your plate. Therefore, we developed an automated process that checks students' writing against 12 aspects of proofreading like paragraphing and over quoting sources to ensure students turn in their best work possible.
- produce the best writing possible with our differentiated Proofreading process that checks 12 essential aspects of writing.
- provide proofreading lessons to help students improve their writing, catch the little mistakes, and learn the value of this skill.
- identify and fix grammar and mechanics, address paragraphing issues, and inform students when they are over quoting source material.
How it works:
Collaborative Peer Review
Our Collaborative Peer Review Workshop explicitly teaches your middle school students how to read like writers as they analyze, evaluate, edit, and revise each other's writing. Students become stronger writers as they help their classmates refine their unique voices.
- provide support for all your writers in the classroom while teaching them a lifelong skill.
- engage students in a highly structured, workshop style writing routine that gives them hands-on practice.
- promote authentic, academic conversations around real writing.
- empower students by teaching them how to improve their writing without the teacher.
- develop students' writing confidence through thoughtful, constructive feedback.
- cultivate critical thinking skills as students analyze and evaluate authentic writing.
- foster a sense of community among writers as students collaborate and exchange diverse perspectives.
How it works:
Accelerate learning with timely feedback!
Instant
With our Auto-Grader, we deliver immediate feedback on students' writing skills. If it's immediate, it's effective!
Personalized
Our personalized feedback provides accolades and insights and suggestions that help students improve as writers.
Differentiated
Our feedback cultivates a love for writing by offering differentiated support that will resonate with each student.
Plan and Organize
How it works for the Classroom Teacher:
When planning a writing task with Ink Writing Universe, you can select an assignment from our extensive library of writing tasks or effortlessly build your own. Our writing assignment library provides writing tasks for all writing types (argument, informative, and narrative) and includes standards-based rubrics that help you measure how well students are meeting your writing outcomes and standards.
How it works for the Students:
When students begin a writing task, they will be able to select a graphic organizer that best fits their writing purpose. Students select from a list of 6 common organizers and learn how to draw the organizer or build it by folding paper. We want students to select and build their own organizers because we want students to build toward independence and transfer this prewriting skill to other writing tasks. Additionally, this blended approach ensures students spend time during the writing process constructing ideas away from computer screens.
Draft
How it works for the Classroom Teacher:
When you are ready for your students to start drafting, simply change the Writing Status to "Ready to Write." Students will immediately see the writing task in their Assignments list. You will be able to monitor student progress on your Activity Dashboard, pause and start the writing assignment, and allow students to draft over multiple days.
How it works for the Students:
Our writing platform ensures your middle school students have all the necessary tools at their fingertips to construct their writing including the prompt, the rubric, graphic organizers and digital notes.
Students navigate our writing platform effortlessly with our user-friendly interface. Our split-screen feature enables students to seamlessly glide through their compositions while simultaneously referring to the prompt, rubric, and sources. And a single click transforms their screen into a distraction-free zone, giving them more space to read or write.
Proofread and Revise
How it works for the Classroom Teacher:
You will be notified on your Activity Dashboard when your students have started the proofreading process. When proofreading is done, your students' status will change to either Peer Review Workshop or Turned In.
How it works for the Students:
Explicitly teach your middle school students how to purposefully proofread and revise their writing with Ink Writing Universe!
Unlike conventional proofreading tools, we don't just correct errors; instead, we empower students by pinpointing areas for improvement and guiding them through the process of fixing these issues themselves.
After proofreading is complete, students launch into our Collaborative Peer Review routine. During this process, students collaborate in teams, fostering a culture of support and growth. Together, students evaluate aspects of their writing ranging from grammar and sentence structure to overall organization and content. Through this collaborative effort, not only do they enhance the quality of their writing, but they also cultivate essential communication skills and a build a genuine community of writers.
Auto-grade, Reflect, & Feedback
How it works for the Classroom Teacher:
As soon as students Turn In their writing, our auto-grader gets to work for you. We can deliver a rubric score and personalized feedback in less than a minute. After you review the scores and feedback, you can release the results and comments to your students.
How it works for the Students:
As soon as students submit their writing for evaluation, we ask two questions that engage students in metacognitive thought:
- What part of your writing are you most proud of?
- What part of the writing assignment would you like more help with?
Then, students receive a rubric score and personalized feedback in 40 seconds. Teachers can review scores and feedback before releasing them to the students.