Produced in response to a school board's directive to develop a plan for implementing a standardized curriculum in the basic subjects on a district-wide basis, this instructional guide is intended for teachers of a course in language arts basic skills for middle school and junior high school students. The guide contains preparatory sheets, activity sheets, evaluation sheets, and answer keys for several writing skill areas. Skills covered include (1) writing the plural form of nouns, (2) writing declarative sentences with compound subjects or verbs, (3) making subjects and verbs agree, (4) generating headings for groups of words or objects, (5) developing a story using an appropriate organizational pattern, (6) composing a paragraph, (7) supplying necessary information, (8) writing personal and business letters, (9) completing a check form, (10) spelling, (11) using punctuation marks, (12) capitalization, and (13) proofreading. (FL)