The Writing Process

1. The Writing Process

2. Do Now: In your journal: Everybody Writes: • What was challenging about writing for a sustained period of time in their journal? • Explain what you liked about it. • Explain what was challenging. How will you adjust your habits to overcome the difficulty in writing each day?

3. The Writing Process • Pre-Writing: Get as many ideas on paper as possible. Cluster, list, free-write. • Drafting: Turning ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Don’t fuss with grammar and punctuation. • Revising: Goal is to improve your writing. Question everything. Listen to feedback and make the most changes in content at this stage. • Editing: Last step before publishing. Find and correct errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. • Publishing: When your essay has zero mistakes. You must proofread one last time with your “final copy.”

4. Stage 1: Pre-Writing • Pre-Writing: Get as many ideas on paper as possible. Cluster, list, free-write. • Keep your hand moving, across the page, keep your hand moving, across the page. No spelling, grammar, punctuation. NO. No spelling, grammar, punctuation. Keep your hand moving, across the page.

5. Pre-writing • Topics, narrowing topics, details.

6. Narrow the topic: Good, Better, Best! • Good Topic: School • Better Topic: International schools • Best Topic: Describing what it’s like to be an American student at an international school in Italy.

7. Narrow the topic: Choose a pre-writing method of your choice and narrow the topic: • The holidays

8. Stage 2: Drafting 2. Drafting: Turning ideas into sentences and paragraphs. Don’t fuss with grammar and punctuation.

9. Free Writing • Good for when you know your topic for writing and have a “writer’s block,” or need to get started. • Set an amount of time (it’s just pre-writing) • Begin to write • Keep your hand moving across the page • Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, and punctuation

10. Clustering • Good for narrowing a topic. • (ex. vacation)

11. Listing • Good for finding a topic to write about. • Also good to list ideas and details when you already have a topic • Aim for a number-it’s a list! Suggested number is a list of 25.

12. Exit Card: Use each of the pre-writing techniques for three of these topics below. • Things I’m interested in. • Things I can make or do. • Things I know about. • Things I have experienced.

13. DO NOW: Everybody writes: • Use one of the pre-writing techniques to write about “television shows.”

14. Drafting: • 3 pt. paragraph

15. 3 paragraph outline – See Winter Activities • I. Title • II. Paragraph 1 – Introduction (3 sentences) • a. Topic and general number sentence • b. Extra information about the topic sentence • c. Enumeration Sentence • III. Paragraph 2 – Body (6-9 sentences) • a. First point sentence • b. One or two supporting sentences for the first point. • c. Second point sentence • d. One or two supporting sentences for the second point • e. Third point sentence • f. One or two supporting sentences for the third point. • IV. Paragraph III – Conclusion (2 sentences) • a. Concluding general statement sentence • b. Concluding summary sentence

16. Read through the essay and then… • Underline: • Topic sentence • Enumerated sentence • First point sentence • Second point sentence • Third point sentence • Concluding summary sentence THEN circle the capital letter at the beginning of each sentence and the end mark at the end of each sentence.

17. How I did it.Topic: Stamp Collecting • Technique: Free writing Goal: Narrow the topic Stamp collecting-I once met a priest who was really into stamp collecting and he kept talking to me about it and at first I wanted to start laughing at his ridiculous and seemingly pointless hobby…as he was talking I thought of a dozen better things I could do with my time…but i tried to be a good listener and all of a sudden I was taken in by his passion of stamps and of his stories about the rare stamps he’s collected he went on talking about the life and journey of stamps and that all stamps tell a story and he also began talking to me about him imaging himself as a stamp and travelling all that way, taking different means of transportation to get from one humble person to another—and he reflected on the message it carried—was it sad news? Good news? He also talked about specialized stamps with unique pictures on them and typos—those I remember him saying were valuable. Stamp collecting could probably be a really good hobby, and potentially addicting, wanting to make good trades, and how do you go about finding people to trade stamps with, afterall? I’d probably have to do research and talk to people about why they started collecting stamps and how they went about it. I could never collect stamps because I’m not a very organized or neat person, and a very valuable stamp could be misplaced easily in my care.

18. Stamp collecting-I once met a priest who was really into stamp collecting and he kept talking to me about it and at first I wanted to start laughing at his ridiculous and seemingly pointless hobby…as he was talking I thought of a dozen better things I could do with my time…but i tried to be a good listener and all of a sudden I was taken in by his passion of stamps and of his stories about the rare stamps he’s collected he went on talking about the life and journey of stamps and that all stamps tell a story and he also began talking to me about him imaging himself as a stamp and travelling all that way, taking different means of transportation to get from one humble person to another—and he reflected on the message it carried—was it sad news? Good news? He also talked about specialized stamps with unique pictures on them and typos—those I remember him saying were valuable. Stamp collecting could probably be a really good hobby, and potentially addicting, wanting to make good trades, and how do you go about finding people to trade stamps with, afterall? I’d probably have to do research and talk to people about why they started collecting stamps and how they went about it. I could never collect stamps because I’m not a very organized or neat person, and a very valuable stamp could be misplaced easily in my care. What do you think I could narrow the topic to?

19. My choice of narrowed topic: • Beginning a Stamp Collection

20. Stage 3: Revising Revising: Goal is to improve your writing. Question everything. Listen to feedback and make the most changes in content at this stage.

21. Stage 4: Editing 4. Editing: Last step before publishing. Find and correct errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

22. Stage 5: Publishing 5. Publishing: When your essay has zero mistakes. You must proofread one last time with your “final copy.”

23. Writing Process Quiz • Part 1 – Pre-writing – 3 minutes • Narrow your topic: A good teacher • Part 2 – Pre-writing to determine the three strongest details – 4 minutes • Part 3 – Write a three-point essay. Follow the outline. Turn in. Pick up revision and editing worksheet.Follow directions. When you’re done, turn it in, and in your journal finish this sentence: Ms. Lavelle’s toes... Write different versions of it until you have 15 different sentences. Star your fave.