Write + Communicate
Preparing Students with College and Career-Ready Writing Skills

Expert 21 provides students with both the skills and the self-monitoring habits of good writers. Students receive direct instruction on writing logical arguments, understanding and evaluating persuasive techniques, and more

Expert 21 is the only program that offers daily opportunities for students to write to reflect, inform, explain, analyze, persuade, influence, and entertain. The program teaches key forms of narrative, expository, and persuasive writing, including:

Students also work on their writing through the Expert Project, a culminating, performance-based activity in each workshop that presents real-world writing opportunities. Teachers receive rubrics and scoring guides to provide ongoing feedback and evaluations. Students will also receive rubrics and scoring guides to encourage self-assessment and peer feedback.

Ruth Culham is well known (and loved) by teachers across the country as the creator of the Traits of Writing. This accessible rubric for evaluating writing has become a staple in middle and high schools. In Expert 21, students build the habit of using the Traits to monitor their own writing, becoming highly meta-cognitive about writing in the process. The traits also provide ongoing professional development for teachers, who often find writing assessment challenging.