DEVELOPING STUDENT INDEPENDENCE WITHIN THE WRITING PROCESS CYCLE.

PURPOSE

  • To develop student independence in using the writing process.
  • To set goals within each writing process cycle so that students learn at least one new strategy or awareness about revising and at least one new strategy or awareness about editing.
  • To teach the writer not the writing piece.

PREPARE

Post a Writing Projects chart to use as a status of the class’s current writing work. Writing is a recursive process so writers may be editing while revising, etc. Put name labels up and develop a system that will allow the students to move their names across the chart during their writing work. (Some have found Velcro, stick-on notes, or clothespins work well for this.) Have students articulate what they are doing as writers in each part of the writing process. And, what they will be doing in the stage as they move their name to a different part of the chart.

EXPLORE

Student Understanding – In your writer’s notebooks you can gather ideas for your writing and expand upon these ideas throughout the writing process.

Build the Chart: Create broad statements that capture the essence of notebook writing. These statements might include:

  • Gathering our feelings
  • Capturing our thoughts, wonderings, opinions and observations
  • Responding to cartoons, artifacts, articles, editorials, poems, limes or phrases and pieces of literature, and Quick Writes
  • Creating lists and webs that can be expanded into writing projects

You will want to be mindful of the kinds of seeds you are planting in the writer’s notebook as you embark on particular genre units of study.

TAKING A PIECE OUT OF THE NOTEBOOK TO DEVELOP INTO A WRITING PROJECT

Student understanding – You will want to choose a seed from your notebook carefully since as a writer you will be taking some time to develop it into a final draft or published piece of writing. In order to do this you will want to read through all of the entries in your notebook. Here are some questions you can ask yourself each time you are considering what seed(s) to develop into a writing project:

  • Is my topic important to me? Do I find it interesting?
  • Is it something I would enjoy exploring further?
  • Do I have a lot to say about this subject?
  • What would I enjoy sharing with a particular audience?
  • What do I want my reader to know?
  • What do I have to say about…?
  • If I explore this topic through my writing, what might I discover?

Here is a minilesson you might teach to help students with the process of taking a seed out of their notebook to develop into a piece of writing:

Minilesson: Writers reread their notebooks to find topics that have special interest for them. They can mark seeds (two or three) that are possibilities for developing into writing projects. Then they can choose one seed to develop.

Use your own notebook to model the process. Then have students reread their notebooks to find three possible topics or ideas they might want to develop. Ask them to mark each topic with stick-on notes. Explain that some of the entries in a notebook don’t lend themselves to writing project work though they may make writers think of topics they want to develop. Also explain that for the first several writing projects you will be asking the writers to choose seeds based on their own life experiences and craft some memoir pieces.

Share: In threes writers share the seed they are planning to develop so that the group can help each writer decide if it is a good choice and why.

FURTHER EXPLORATION IN THE WRITER’S NOTEBOOK

Student Understanding – You might want to do some related entries to in your writer’s notebook for the seed you have chosen or for other entries. This can help you think about characters, setting, dialogue, developing important scenes, structure or point of view. This additional writing can be done in the writer’s notebook at any time during the writing process. Here are some related entries for writing projects:

  • Audience
  • Purpose
  • Character sketch
  • Exploring character further - thoughts, opinions, actions, habits, feelings
  • Setting description
  • Time Line
  • Dialogue
  • Experimenting with point of view
  • Experimenting with different sides of the story

After teaching this concept you might add another question under EXPLORE on your chart:

  • What entries might I add to my writer’s notebook to further explore my topic?

When writers have decided on a seed and developed further entries in their writer’s notebook (optional) they are ready to write their discovery draft and can move their name on the chart from EXPLORE to DISCOVERY DRAFT.

DISCOVERY DRAFT

Student Understanding - Once you have decided on a topic freely write your ideas to discover all of your thinking. As a writer you are “discovering” more about the topic and its importance to you.

Minilesson: Once writers have decided on a topic they can freely write their ideas to discover all their thinking about it. This is called a “discovery draft” because the writer is “discovering” more about the topic and its importance to them through quick writing. Explain that today is a day to write freely about the topic. Explain the use of the discovery draft paper that students will be using.

Share: Circle share possibilities: Each writer briefly shares the topic s/he has chosen. Other possibilities: Students discuss such questions as: “How did it feel to do discovery draft writing?” “What were you thinking about as a writer?” “What discoveries did you make about your topic?” These questions can also guide a discussion for students to articulate what they are doing as writers in their discovery draft writing.

Build the Chart

  • What is it I want my reader to understand from reading this piece?
  • What might my reader like to know more about?
  • What is standing out as being really interesting about this writing?
  • What did I learn by writing this, what did I discover?
  • What makes this uniquely mine, nobody else could have written it!

When writers have completed their discovery draft they move their names on the chart from DISCOVERY DRAFT to BIG REVISION. Continue to remind your students to move their names to the next section of the chart after finishing a step in the writing process. This helps you to take a quick status of the class and helps students have a visual reminder of what they are working on as writers. As students are moving through each part of the writing process, remember to have them verbalize what they have done and why they have decided they are ready to move on. It helps students understand different parts of the writing process and how it is helping them as writers if they are able to say for example, “In my work on my discovery draft this is what I did….Now I am able to move on to Big Revision.

BIG REVISION

Student Understanding - Big Revision is the thinking and revising you can do as a writer about my piece as a whole. The biggest consideration is: Do I have a focus, for my writing. If I understand my purpose, what it is I really want my reader to know, it will help me focus my piece.

Minilesson: When writers find a focus it makes their writing clear and powerful for readers.

There are many ways to help students focus a piece of writing. Different elements can be put into sharp focus. Focus the time so it is not the whole day but perhaps five minutes of the day. Focus the characters so that it is not the whole family but one family member. Focus the topic so that it is not the whole summer or a three-week trip but rather one significant incident. With informational writing narrowing the focus or finding an angle is also crucial. Writing a piece on dogs is too big a topic but writing a pamphlet on tips for training your dog is specific and manageable. Read your writing as an example and show the writers how you determined your focus. You may want to give students the metaphor of a camera with a zoom lens. The more the lens zooms in on a topic the smaller the amount in the picture in the frame but the details become more vivid. You might want to bring in a camera to show this.

Share: Have students who narrowed the focus of their piece share how they did it. They might say something like: “______was my general topic and I narrowed it by making ______the focus for my piece.”

Another possibility would be to have students discuss how narrowing the focus of their piece is powerful for readers

Build the chart with possible questions writers can ask to help focus their piece:

  • What is the purpose of writing this piece? Can I answer the question “So what?’ Could my reader answer this question?
  • What is the focus of my piece?
  • What do I want to say in this piece?
  • What is the one thing (2 at the most) that I really want my reader to understand?
  • Am I making my purpose clear to the reader by the way I am writing the piece?

As it corresponds to your teaching you can also teach other ideas around big revision land add other questions to your chart around these understandings:

  • What genre have I chosen for this piece and why?
  • From what point of view have I decided to write this piece?
  • What decisions have I made around how to structure this piece to make my writing effective?

It is helpful to check that your writers have a focus before they move on to further revision. Here is a possible minilesson around choosing a genre:

Minilesson: Writers choose a genre/container to fit the topic.

When you feel most of your writers can focus their writing you may want to do a minilesson on choosing a powerful genre for their piece. “Will this be a poem, letter, or is it a narrative piece?” Use your writing to give an example of the genre you are considering. Describe other examples. A description of a spring morning might be a poem. A fight you had with your mother and how you felt about it might be written as a letter to her. Have them play with this a bit by engaging them in finding an entry in their notebook to craft into a poem or maybe a letter. This will help your students determine what genre would best fit their writing. It is also helpful to have students talk with you about what they know about a genre to determine if it would be appropriate for their intended writing. Students can also look through notebook entries to see what entries might lend themselves to a poem, letter, or narrative.

Share: Have students who decided to write in a different genre share the change they made and why.

FURTHER REVISION

Student Understanding - Revise means to re-see. The revision part of the writing process is an opportunity for you to think about how you can best craft your piece in order to get the meaning across to your reader.

Further Revision might include revising the beginning or conclusion, providing a character’s inner thoughts, stretching a scene, using powerful language sensory details, or figures of speech. Here is an example:

Minilesson: Writers have powerful ways they can use time in their writing pieces to speed up through some parts and to stretch out the important scenes for the reader. This could be an umbrella minilesson in which various mentor text are used to show how authors are strategic in how they work with the passage of time in their stories. A powerful mentor text for this is Sister Anne’s Hands by Marybeth Lorbiecki. This umbrella minilesson can be done as an introduction to a series of other minilessons on stretching a scene, speeding up time and helpful transition words that writers use. If that was the introductory minilesson you might have them share places in their story where they thought it would be helpful to speed up time or slow it down or discuss how it is helpful to readers when writers don’t weight all the pieces in their stories the same way.

How we build the chart around Further Revision depends on the learning we have been doing as we build our revision toolbox. For instance if you had been doing some minilessons on condensingtime during the unimportant parts of the story or taking out extraneous information you might put questions like this up for your students to consider:

  • Are there places in my writing where I go off topic or have added information that distracts my reader from the heart of the piece?
  • Are there parts of my piece that I should move through very quickly? What techniques have we studied that I would use to do that?

If you were working on different ways to stretching the important scenes, you might post this on the chart under further revision”

  • Is there information or description I could add so that my reader will better understand this important scene? Do I need to add character or setting description, dialogue, character’s thoughts, feelings, actions?

If you had a goal of teaching your writers different techniques for stretching the scenes that are important in their stories you might post this on the chart under further revision”

  • Is there information or description I could add so that my reader will better understand this important scene? Do I need to add character or setting description, dialogue, character’s thoughts, feelings, actions?

REVISION CORNER

The goal in our writing instruction is to help our students learn how to make purposeful decisions about their current writing and transfer these understandings to future writing. We are working toward having students become what Barry Lane refers to as writing doctors who are able to think about effective ways to revise their pieces and techniques for doing so. It may be helpful to have a revision corner in your room where different writing goals or revision strategies could be posted as you teach them. You might want to organize these strategies under broader categories. You could for instance have categories for Structure, Ways to Add Detail, Narrowing the Focus or Shrinking Time. Under these broader headings you could also create questions like the two mentioned above. Each time students go through the writing process you might ask them to choose two ways they might revise their writing. They could look at the revision corner to get ideas of the strategies for revision they have been learning as a guide for making purposeful decisions for a specific piece of writing. It would also be possible to build a notebook or have your students build notebooks with these lessons on Big and Further Revision.

EDITING

Student Understanding -Editing allows you to communicate your intended meaning through effective use of punctuation, spelling and conventions. Editing is most effective when writers reread their piece with one editing issue in mind at a time. This would include spelling, the correct use of homophones, identifying ones own spelling challenges and demons as well as grammar and punctuation. Here is an example of an editing minilesson:

Minilesson: Writers reread their writing carefully to make sure no words are missing to help readers understand their writing. (It is helpful to read your piece slowly aloud to catch these errors.)

Model this with your own writing. Have the students check their own writing.

Share: Discuss why using the editing process is important for readers.

Build the chart, again recording questions that writers can ask themselves to determine if they have worked sufficiently on EDITING and are ready to write their final draft. These questions will vary depending on your writers’ needs.

  • Have I reread my piece carefully to make sure I don’t have any missing words? Have I checked carefully for spelling including homophones and my demons?
  • Have I proofread for correct punctuation including commas, periods, question marks, quotation marks and exclamation marks?
  • Have I checked for capital letters?
  • Have I checked to see that I don’t have any sentence fragments or run-on sentences?

PREPARING FOR A FINAL DRAFT CONFERENCE (Optional)

Student Understanding – To prepare for this conference carefully review your writing in relationship to the information on the writing process chart to check to make sure that you have worked carefully in each of the areas. When you feel they are ready for a final draft conference, your writing folder goes in a special basket marked “Final Draft Conference.” You may then work in your writer’s notebook until the teacher confers with you or writes a note to indicate agreement that this piece of writing reflects current understandings and integrating learning from recent minilessons and guided writing lessons. When writers decide they are ready for a final draft conference they are saying, “This is my best work as a writer at this point in time.”

It is important to balance setting a rigorous standard for students to grow as writers through their work on writing projects with not having the demands within the stages of the writing process insurmountable. For instance it can be helpful to give the guideline that when a student brings a piece to final draft conference it reflects one modification within Big Revision, one or two modifications in Further Revision and careful editing.