Our mission at NoRedInk is to build better writers, and as you know, that’s not easy. There are countless skills that go into strong writing — from overcoming the fear of a blank page to connecting claims and evidence.
We want students to appreciate the writing process and feel confident and engaged as they write.
That’s why we are excited to introduce Guided Drafts, NoRedInk’s very first full-essay writing feature! Guided Drafts give students a self-guided and supportive experience working on a structured piece of writing.
In Guided Drafts, students draft their essays piece by piece, with clear structure to make the writing process more approachable. As they write, students can view tutorials, exemplars, and tips for each component of their essay. This scaffolding is tailored to specific essay types, like persuasive, argumentative, and literary analysis (with more options on the way!). Best of all, by empowering your class with just-in-time support, Guided Drafts frees you up to provide individual instruction to the students who need it most.
Here’s what teachers and students are saying about Guided Drafts:
“It was perfect for differentiating the activity. The students who needed more support had it available, and it was a good reminder for students who were more advanced. I appreciated that it saved me time reviewing essay components and allowed me more time to support students individually.” - Teacher, 11th grade
“I really liked that NoRedInk gives you tips and advice when you are stuck in some part of the essay. And it is very useful to have all your writing and thoughts organized in blocks.” - Student, 9th grade
“I noticed a huge improvement in the structure of their writing, especially how organized their body paragraphs were. The concepts of claim, evidence, and reasoning are usually really hard for them to grasp; that they have to explain to the reader how the evidence supports the claim and can’t just assume it’s obvious to the reader. I think having that reiterated over and over again really helped some struggling writers.” - Teacher, 9th grade
“I enjoyed the fact that I got to go through the writing process step-by-step, learning each point along the way. As a result, I believe that my ability to write would definitely get stronger after doing one of these.” - Student, 11th grade