Activities to help generate or organize ideas for writing before they write the first draft (S. Graham & D. Perin, 2007).
Everything that you do before students begin to draft their writing such as exposing students to a wide variety of good quality mentor texts.
Providing opportunities for conversation between adults and students to generate ideas.
Use your programs of study for curriculum outcomes related to print awareness.
Please refer to CESD’s Essential Outcomes work if you are using the previous Alberta Curriculum (Grade 7+).
Here is the New Alberta ELAL Curriculum, from the New Learn Alberta website, laid out like a scope and sequence.
Pre-writing strategies (not in any order):
Think/pair/share
Oral conversations
Question
Free writing
List ideas
Clustering ideas
Create a topic list with input from home
Use pictures to generate ideas/interest
Develop a writing outline
Teacher modelling
Mentor texts – identifying good techniques
Explicit teaching strategies for planning (indenting, skipping lines, where to start)
Build background knowledge
Brainstorming ideas – planning
Build vocabulary
Co-construction of text with teacher – I write, we write, you write
Think/talkalouds
Peer planning conversations
Classroom displays – word walls, vocabulary, organizational structures such as Venn diagrams, etc.
Students keep idea lists of writing ideas/topics/images
Show students exemplars of student writing—
For second language writing, increase time for scaffolding:
Pre-teaching vocabulary, explicitly teaching sentence structure
Offer a variety of choices for students during the planning phase – drawing, graphic organizers, verbal planning, use of technology tools, etc.
Working in a group during pre-writing
Significantly more time during the planning phase
Specifically building background knowledge and vocabulary
Visual supports for vocabulary development