the more basic you get with your writing students the better. Once a good foundation is built you can move on to basic paragraph writing and on to essays. these skills take time to develop though and you will find that most textbooks will move your students forward too quickly.
you mayfind resistance from your students when you take them back to basic. This can be done without demoralizing them or making them feel their skills are poor. Take the approach that we can make the good skills you already have even better by polishing up some good basic skills.