D839 Teaching Writing in Secondary Schools, catalog number EDUC 6068, is the two-CU methods course covering how adolescents develop as writers across contexts and genres, and how writing gets assessed. It sits second in the English methods sequence. The scored competency most candidates underestimate is response: what a teacher writes on a draft, when, and to what end. Feedback is an instructional act with research behind it, and a plan that treats it as marking errors leaves an aspect unmet.
Process, genre and response
Writing instruction is scored on three things that are easy to conflate. The first is process. Drafting, feedback, revision and editing are different activities with different purposes, and a plan that collapses them into write and hand in has removed the part where learning happens. Revision means reconsidering what the piece is doing; editing means correcting surface features. Treating them as the same word is the fastest way to lose the aspect on the writing process.
The second is genre. Argument, explanation and narrative have different structures, different evidence expectations and different audiences, and secondary standards name them separately. Instruction has to teach the moves of the genre rather than a universal five-part shape. A plan that would produce identical support for an argumentative essay and a personal narrative has not addressed genre at all.
The third is response and assessment. Comments that only mark errors do not improve writing; comments tied to a criterion, limited in number and directed at the next draft do. This is also where rubric design appears: writing a rubric that distinguishes performance levels in observable language is harder than it looks, and courses in this sequence frequently score it.
Turning scored aspects into a writing unit plan
Open your Course of Study first. The scoring detail is there rather than in the public catalog, and in a writing methods course the aspects often decide how much of the process your plan has to show. A rubric scoring feedback needs a plan that reaches a draft; a rubric scoring genre instruction needs mentor texts.
Each aspect is judged alone with a 2 needed to pass, which has a specific consequence in this course: the feedback and assessment aspects cannot be satisfied by a strong instruction section. They need their own visible sections with their own detail.
The word budget, worked. With six scored aspects and directions asking for around 1,900 words, reserve 130 for context and 110 for a close, leaving 1,660, or roughly 275 an aspect. Then move weight to the two aspects that carry this course: feedback practice and assessment design each take an extra 80 words, drawn 40 at a time from the sections that only describe the sequence. If you are building a rubric, its criteria rows count toward the assessment aspect, so write fewer of them and make each one observable.
Leave time for the mentor text. Finding a short published example that shows the genre moves you plan to teach takes longer than writing the lesson that uses it, and a plan without one usually reads as abstract.
A structure that fits a writing instruction plan
Task directions win where they prescribe headings. Where they do not, this shape keeps every scored element visible.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Writers and context | Grade, current writing performance, language backgrounds, prior instruction | Grounds every instructional decision that follows |
| Standard and objective | The writing standard with its code and an observable objective | Scored for alignment with the genre named in the standard |
| Genre study | The mentor text and the specific moves students will notice and try | Scored for teaching the genre rather than a generic essay shape |
| Process sequence | Planning, drafting, feedback, revision and editing as distinct stages with time | Scored for keeping revision and editing separate |
| Feedback plan | Who gives it, when, in what form, and how many points at a time | Scored for being usable by a student on the next draft |
| Supports | Adjustments for developing writers and multilingual writers, tied to this genre | Scored for specificity; sentence frames named beat support promised |
| Assessment | The rubric or criteria, with levels described observably | Scored for language a student could use to self-assess |
| Sources | Mentor texts, standards and any published approach, cited | Scored where citation is named |
Show one worked example of the feedback you would give on a real paragraph. Nothing else demonstrates the feedback aspect so quickly, and it takes eighty words.
Evidence craft in a writing methods submission
The evidence here is a mix of standards, published research on writing development and the texts you put in front of students.
- Cite the writing standard by code and quote its verbs, because argument, explanation and narrative carry different requirements in most frameworks.
- Attribute the instructional approach you use, whether that is a workshop structure, mentor text instruction, sentence-level work or peer review protocols.
- Cite mentor texts fully. A published paragraph used as a model is a source, not an anonymous example.
- Ground claims about feedback in the research on response to writing rather than in personal preference.
- If you include student writing, use anonymised or invented samples and say which. Real student work in a course submission needs identifiers removed as a matter of professional practice.
- Apply APA where your directions require it, including for standards documents and instructional frameworks.
The most persuasive single element you can include is a short before and after: a student sentence, the comment you would write, and the revision it would plausibly produce. It answers the feedback aspect and the revision aspect at once.
What separates Competent from a plan sent back
Independent aspect scoring means writing plans usually return for one narrow reason, most often a feedback section that describes marking rather than teaching.
- Revision and editing are treated as different activities with different time.
- Genre instruction rests on a mentor text and names specific moves.
- Feedback is limited, criterion-referenced and directed at the next draft.
- The rubric describes what performance looks like rather than how good it is.
- Supports address the demands of this genre for these writers.
- The objective's verb, the instruction and the assessment all match.
Performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return is a delay rather than a mark against you. In a six-month flat-rate term the delay is the cost that matters. Our limits do not move: proctored objective assessments are preparation only, portal credentials are never requested, and we never teach, contact schools or complete field placement paperwork.
Six mistakes that cost time in D839
- Teaching one essay shape for every genre. Standards name genres separately because their moves differ, and generic structure teaching cannot satisfy a genre aspect.
- Marking every error on a draft. Comprehensive correction is demoralising, ineffective and evidence of a feedback plan with no priorities.
- Calling editing revision. If students only fix commas between drafts, the revision stage did not happen.
- Writing a rubric of adjectives. Excellent, good and fair describe nothing. Criteria have to name what is present in the writing.
- Planning peer review with no protocol. Unstructured peer feedback produces praise, and the aspect scoring feedback sees that immediately.
- Skipping the mentor text. Without a model, genre instruction becomes description, students have nothing concrete to notice and imitate, and the genre aspect is left resting on your explanation alone.
How support works on this course
Send the task directions and the scoring detail from your Course of Study. What comes back is a plan with the process stages given real time, a genre study anchored to a mentor text, a feedback plan with a worked example, and a rubric whose levels are written in observable language a student could act on.
Rubric writing is the piece most candidates find hardest and the piece that transfers furthest. Once you can write criteria that describe evidence rather than quality, every later assessment task in the program is faster.
The second thing we work on is response volume. New teachers routinely design a feedback plan that would take eleven hours a week to deliver for one class, and an evaluator reading for feasibility can see it. Deciding in advance which drafts get written comments, which get a conference, which get peer response against a checklist and which get nothing but a completion mark is a professional judgment, and stating it in the plan turns a workload problem into evidence of planning.
Questions students ask about D839
Is D839 the same course as EDUC 6068?
Which English methods course comes first?
Can you grade or write student samples for me?
Writing unit due and the feedback plan is thin?
Send your directions and your standard. You get separated process stages, a genre study built on a mentor text and a rubric written in observable language.
Where D839 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.