Writing to Learn

"Writing is thinking on paper."

- William Zinsser

The students don't need to write during the entire lesson, but it takes kids a LONG time to write, so plan accordingly.

This page explains the 5 steps in the writing process, with ideas on how to help students who have special problems. Then you will find specific writing methods that will make lesson planning easier, toward the bottom of the page.

One of the steps in planning a lesson that contains writing is to choose what genre the students will write. Make it interesting for your students.

Genres (types of writing to choose from)

5 paragraph essay

Writing Process

1. Prewriting

2. Drafting

3. Revising

4. Editing

5. Publishing

PREWRITING: You probably know from your own experience how hard it is to get started on a writing project. This is even harder for students who have problems focusing or organizing their thoughts.

Conferences: Talk with individual students about what they will be writing. Once they can say it, they can write it.
Brainstorming: This can be done with an individual or a group of any size. Think together aloud about what is to be written. You just need to get the students thinking and then let them loose!
Writing to explore: This could be used after students have had some learning activity when they need to reflect on the experience or it could be used as to activate prior knowledge. In writing to explore, students just write whatever comes to mind about a certain topic. Conferencing afterwards would help the writers decide if they have developed some ideas that could be revised to create a piece.
Listing: Making lists of ideas is a variation of webbing or outlining. Once the writer has a number of ideas listed for the piece of writing, the ideas can be organized. After that, the writing is usually easy. Brainstorming and conferencing could include listing ideas.
Graphic organizers See this link for graphic organizers that can be used to organize thoughs before beginning to write. Graphic organizers can be used to understand what someone else wrote, so they are great for reading comprehension, but they are also wonderful for organizing thoughts before writing.
Outlining/webbing

Drawing: For students who have trouble thinking in words, especially if you the task is to write a description, why not have them draw first? This will help them visualize and think of details. Then, maybe in a conference, you can show them how to turn each detail in the picture into sentences.
Reading/researching/fact finding: As I write this, I look up professional journal articles or refer to books in my office. We have to find the facts in order to write them. Once we find them, we can list them or use any of the ideas above for organizing them.

R.A.F.T. is a writing strategy where students and/or teacher decide on what role the author will play, what audience the writer is writing to, what format (or genre) of writing is to be used, and what the topic is.

R = role

A = audience

F = format

T = topic

Example:

Role: Abraham Lincoln

Audience: Parent of deceased soldier

Format: Letter

Topic: Loss of son

How could you apply this strategy to your teaching?

DRAFTING: This is just writing or typing in full sentences and paragraphs. Some students might have IEP directions that require a scribe to write down what they say. If you watch your students, some might sit staring at their paper. Some of that is good, because the student is thinking. But if it continues, you might need to conference with them to get the thoughts flowing again. Students who have trouble getting the thoughts they have on paper might appreciate if you temporarily scribe their thoughts until they get some momentum built.

REVISING: This is a step that professional writers love, but many others avoid. This can be faciliated through peer conferences if they students are taught how to do them or through teacher conferences, where the following questions are asked:

Does it make sense?

Does it do the job? (Describing, persuading, explaining, etc.)

Are the ideas in the best order?

In this video, the teacher leads a group conference and explains how to work with students to do meaningful revision.

EDITING: Even if you aren't the English teacher, you need to reinforce standard writing conventions. Your students will probably write sentence fragments and run-on sentences. Keep pointing the errors out. Teaching morphemes will help improve spelling. Comma rules seem mysterious, but if you take the effort to learn them, you will be able to help your students. Here is a link to an explanation of the 8 basic comma rules. You can learn 8 rules! You know many of these already, so why not learn the rest? Come on, be a good teacher.

APA, MLA, Turabian, what style…?

M. U. G. S.

Mechanics

Usage

Grammar

Spelling

PUBLISHING: If no one sees it, why should they write it? What ways can you think of publishing your students’ work?

Mailing letters

Posting writing on bulletin boards, in hallways

Reading over the PA

Creating a class website: check with your administration over the legalities of this.

Reading the work aloud in class: Be careful to keep this short. Not everyone needs to read every day.

Portfolios can be kept of writing so that it can be shared for Open House, Grandparent's Day, etc.

Science fairs, etc.

Newsletters

Class newspaper/magazine: my students loved making these.

Another way to publish is to create a hardcover photo book through companies such as Shutterfly or Snapfish. Click on the links below to see how easy and affordable it can be:

www.shutterfly.com

www.snapfish.com

Here are 50 ways to publish!

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITING

Read-Write-Pair-Share: Students read an assignment, write in response, share written ideas with a partner, then share with the whole class. That's a whole lesson plan right there.

Quick Writes: "For 3 minutes I want you to write as fast as you can, without stopping, about.... Begin!" Great way to get ideas flowing for a discussion. Best if you have activated prior knowledge with an activity first.

Entrance or Exit activity: Give a prompt, write for a few minutes, share. I think I would brainstorm with the kids for a minute or two.

During reading: Writing in response to reading ensures that students will think about the text. Double entry journaling is a cool way to do this. Here are directions for doing double entry journaling.

After reading: This could take so many different forms. See all of the above. Is that a cop-out? No, it just could involve so many variations.

From prompts: I wouldn't do this for all writing assignments, but students do need to be able to write from a prompt. Make it interesting and offer a choice of several prompts.

Sticky Note Writing: Kids take notes while researching on post-its, arrange the notes in the order they would like to write, and then begin drafting.

Response Writing

In response to activity/demonstration

In response to reading

In response to guest speaker

In response to website/webquest

In response to field trip

In response to?????????

KWL Plus

Students write up the information from the L column of KWL

Formal Reports

Identify topic/burning question

Research to find information

Organize information

Write draft

Revise

Edit

Publish

Summary Writing

Great for closure!

Provide graphic organizer…main ideas, supporting details.

Journals/Learning Logs

Grading?

Writing back to the learners.

Discussion boards online.

Exit slips

Great closure: Ask students to write about

One thing they learned.

One question they have.

One thing that isn’t clear to them.

One

Public Speaking

Requires prewriting, drafting, revising, practicing, delivery.

Comic Strips

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/comiccreator.pdf

See the Comic Vocabulary Interactive

Poetry

Why stay with the expository genre?

PowerPoints/videos/presentations/

performances are multi-media forms of writing.

http://www.edu.uwo.ca/mpc/poem.html

The Thinker’s Guide to How to Write a Paragraph by Richard Paul and Linda Elder

I'm not assigning this, but it is good. Please click on Howtowrite pdf. It's only a few pages long.