  Help students become better writers with this engaging program. It gives pratical tips on how to master the three major stages of the process: prewriting, writing and revising. It's presented in a step-by-step format so students can see how to generate ideas, gather and organize information, prepare a plan, write a first draft, make revisions and prepare a final draft.(41 min) |
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| Teacher's Guide • Program Objectives After viewing this program, students should be able to: --Recognize that writing is a communication skill that can be learned. --Understand that writing is a process that begins long before the first draft, and concludes long after it. --Make use of such prewriting “warm-up” exercises as freewriting and keeping a writer’s journal. --Gather information and ideas through reflection and research, and organize them into a basic writing plan, using such techniques as storyboarding and idea mapping. --Write a basic first draft, guided (but not enslaved) by the plan, nor inhibited by the misconception that every word must be perfect. --Revise, edit, and polish the draft into a finished work. • Summary of Content Part One: Getting Started Many student writers suffer from a fear of writing—a fear that writing requires some special talent. But writing, at least writing for ordinary communication, is simply a skill, a skill that can be learned. Learning to write requires the development of “mental muscles,” which, like body muscles, requires the development of “mental muscles,” which, like body muscles, require regular exercise. Two ways of developing these muscles—of making a habit of writing—are daily freewriting, and keep a daily writer’s journal. Writing may be considered a process, which begins long before words are put on paper, and continues after the first draft is written. The first step in the process is developing a concept, which involves defining the topic you’ll be writing about, the audience you’ll be writing for, and the purpose you hope to accomplish by writing. Part Two: Gathering Materials and Making a Plan When you have a task that requires a process, whether you’re writing an article or baking a cake, you’re not going to be successful unless you have the right materials and a good plan. Gathering materials and preparing a plan are the final steps in the stage of the writing process called pre-writing. Gathering materials may include library research, interviewing, and observation, and will almost certainly involve personal recollection and reflection. The information and ideas you collect must then be organized into a plan. Two organizing methods are demonstrated: idea mapping and storyboarding. You may also wish to use a more formal outline for all or part of your plan, especially if the argument or the information is especially complex. • Part Three: The First Draft When you write a first draft, you shouldn’t expect it to be word-perfect. So when you are undertaking a writing project with a deadline, make a schedule that provides time for evaluation and revision after the first draft is written. Use your writing plan as a guide, but not as an ironclad contract. Some of your best ideas will come to you while you’re writing. Try to work steadily on your draft, to maintain your forward momentum. After finishing the draft, lay it aside and let it “cook” in your mind for awhile. Then evaluate the draft, to see whether it fits its intended topic, audience, and purpose. Put yourself in the place of your audience, by reading it aloud into a tape recorder, for example, and playing it back. Seek out the help of “editors”—friends, family members, and teachers—to give you a fresh perspective. After evaluation the draft, it’s time to begin the final stage of the writing process, revision. • Part Four: Revising and Polishing Just as a sound building can’t be constructed on a bad foundation, serious structural problems in a piece of writing must be remedied, no matter how much revision is required. For example, the work should contain a clear statement of its main argument, or thesis, and a strong conclusion. Revisions should be made based on your evaluation of the draft, in terms of fitting your topic, audience, and purpose. You should also check to make sure the ideas are presented in a clear and logical order. Next you should copy-edit the piece, to correct errors in punctuation, grammar, and wording. Finally, you make the final copy of the piece, and proofread it for spelling and other mistakes. Writing is work, and requires concentration, self-discipline, and practice. But the rewards—particularly the reward of communicating with an audience—can be very satisfying. • Related Activities 1. Freewriting Help students to get ready for freewriting by holding practice sessions in the classroom. Begin by asking how coaches in most sports start practice sessions, and work for answers that focus on “warming up.” Point out that writing requires similar “warm-ups.” Tell the class that for the next few sessions they will be doing freewriting warm-ups. Set up ground rules as follows: a) Students are to write non-stop for three minutes. b) Spelling, punctuation, grammar don’t count; what matters is only that they keep writing. c) Pen or pencil should not stop moving for the three minutes. d) If students cannot think how to start, or if they run out of ideas, they are to write, “I can’t think of anything to write,” until their thoughts begin to flow. During the first few sessions it can be useful to provide topics for the freewriting. Some that work well are: --A Funny Experience --My Proudest Moment --My Biggest Disappointment --A Pet I Have Loved --The Person I Most Admire --The Most Frightening Experience I’ve Had --My Best or Worst Writing Experience After a few sessions, encourage students to generate their own topics for the class warm-ups. Increase the freewriting time gradually to ten minutes. In a week to ten days, have students continue freewriting as an independent activity, as illustrated in the program. Make it clear that you will want to see some evidence of this freerwriting, but this work should not be used for correction or grading. It is writing practice, not writing product. 2. Brainstorming Brainstorming is a useful pre-writing activity, to help students generate topics for future writing assignments and to stretch their imaginations. If the class is unfamiliar with the procedure, it is helpful to give them a practice session. Explain that the purpose is to produce, through brainstorming, a master list of at least fifty writing topics. Begin by having them play “free association.” Say a word and have a student say the first word that comes to mind. Example: cat—dog; night—day. Each student gets a new word and has to respond. Next do an “association chain.” You say a word; the first student responds; the next student responds to the word the first student said and so on around the room. Example: blue—sky—cloud—fluffy—white, etc. Then explain that brainstorming is very similar except that you will be jotting down writing topics on the board, and that anyone can respond without going in order. Tell them the goal is 50 topics in 10 minutes. There will be no censorship; all topics should be allowed. (Expect to be tested. Simply list “drugs,” “sex,” etc. The class will soon move on to other items.) They can use items already on the list to “piggy back” on new items as they did with word association. They are to try to keep the list building without pauses except to get items on the chalkboard. To help provide a focus for the list, one of the following headings can be used as a title for the list. The number of items is optional. a. Fifty topics worth reading about. b. Fifty topics worth writing about. c. Fifty places worth visiting. d. Fifty beautiful things. e. Fifty people worth getting to know more about. For classes that have difficulty generating ideas, an interim step between the association games and preparing the list is a brainstorming session which tries to generate wild and imaginative ways to use a teaspoon, a lure, a reflector, or a sunshade on a raft in the middle of the ocean, or use a single brick in a room. Once the master list has been produced, it is helpful to duplicate it and pass it out to each student and/or to prepare a bulletin board display so it is on view each day. New lists can be created at intervals throughout the year. Because the lists have been generated as a group activity, students are often more willing to “buy into” a writing assignment from them than from topics suggested by textbooks or teachers. 3. The Care and Feeding of Journals Most students will need you to provide a frame of reference for writing journals. Duplicate or read aloud the opening pages of The Diary of Anne Frank. Ask, “Why do you think she gave the name ‘Kitty” to her diary?” Encourage students to find a suitable “name” for the journal they will be keeping. “Nonbooks,” which can be found in most stationery or bookstores, make excellent journals. Show one to the class and suggest they get one for use. Point out that the journal should be considered an extension of self. It will permit reactions to experiences with people, places, or things. It allows the student to store away unusual and interesting bits of information. For example, he or she might go to an ice cream store and simply note some of the flavors, the smells, the sounds, the ages of people who are found there. Thumbing through a magazine can lead to lists of names of people, of strange events, of new places, types of clothing pictured. There can be a section for dialogue, which has been overheard, words that are new. Start students off with some of these activities in a class setting, to get them comfortable with, and in the habit of keeping a journal. Help them to see the journal as a companion to “talk to” and to “share with.” It will help provide ideas for topics to write about, and build a knowledge and emotion base for future writing. It is advisable to monitor student use at first. Once the habit has developed, students often report that they feel lost without their “companion.” 4. Evaluating Topic, Audience, and Purpose To help students develop sound concepts for writing, use some of the following ideas to give them practice in matching topics to audience and purpose. A. Use the following list of questions: 1. Who is the audience (Friend? Parent? Teacher?) And how much does he, she or they know about the topic. 2. What is the purpose? (To get a grade? A favor? A date?) 3. What are my feelings about the topic? (Confident? Angry? Sad? Neutral?) 4. What kind of role do I want to play as a writer? (Should I be myself? Another person? A describer? A storyteller? A judge? A defendant? An applicant? A requester? An Authority?) 5. What language do I need? (Formal? Casual? Respectful? Friendly? Etc.) 6. How much and what kind of emotion do I want to reveal? (Matter of fact? Polite? Praising? Glad?) B. After students have copied and discussed this check list, have them apply it to any of the following situations: 1. A boy/girl has asked you to a party. You really want to go but don’t want to seem to eager. Write a note accepting the invitation. 2. You have to create a message to convince people to stop smoking. What message would you create for a parent, a friend, a teacher, a school bulleting board, an article in the school paper? 3. A company has sent you the wrong record. a) The mistake is theirs: you wish to return the record without paying for it. b) You made the mistake, but nonetheless wish to return the record without paying for it. Write both letters. 4. You want to create a commercial for yogurt to appear on one of the following programs. How would the type of program affect the approach you would use? a. Tom and Jerry cartoons b. the Super bowl c. the evening news d. an afternoon soap opera e. a game show like “Jeopardy” 5. Provide students with magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Time, People, Seventeen. Have them study articles in the one they have been given. Then ask them to report an event about their class as it might appear in that magazine. 5. Using the Library as an “Idea Lab” Review with your students the usefulness of the library by organizing a library search for answers to questions like the following: a. What does your name mean? b. Why do people say “bless you” when you sneeze? c. What is the longest bridge in the world? d. What professional baseball player holds the record for the most career home runs? e. Your brother is travelling in Europe. You want to call him in London at noon, London time. At what time should you place the call? f. You want the latest review of a movie starring the boy who played the lead in “Back to the Future.” (How do you find his name and the review?) Another approach is to have students generate questions and answers that might be used on a game show, or in a version of Trivial Pursuit. 6. Storyboarding Storyboarding is, as the title suggests, an effective method for plotting stories, as well as compositions. Here is a popular class activity based on this concept. Divide the class into five groups. Each group is to be assigned one storyboard category from the following: a. Names of heroes b. Names of villains c. Settings d. Problems e. Ways for resolving problems The five groups will then brainstorm as many responses to their category as possible with a five-minute period. They should then select their five best responses and place each on a separate card. These cards should then be distributed at random among the five teams, so that each group ends up with five cards—one from each category. Each group should work together to write a story, using the five elements on the cards, plus their own special touches. The stories should be read aloud to the class. 7. After the First Draft: Peer Review Devoting class time to peer reviews has proven a useful vehicle to aid evaluation of the rough draft and to provide motivation for television. Review by a real audience helps the writer determine if he is saying what he wants to say. Peer review not only provides a reason for revision, it helps the write expand or clarify to improve his message. Finally, because the writing has “gone public,” the writer is likely to revise more extensively before it comes to you for evaluation, making your burden lighter. To focus attention each member of the class should have response sheets to fill in—one for each piece of writing to be reviewed. The papers can be read aloud or duplicated for reading. Response sheets should include the following: 1. Summarize what you hear/read in a sentence or two. 2. What purpose did the write seem to have? 3. What audience did the writer have in mind? 4. Was the writer’s language correct for his audience and purpose? 5. What did you like best? 6. What more would you like to know about the subject? Divide the class into groups of three to five students. Everyone reads his own piece of writing out loud, exactly as written. Each paper is read twice. After the second reading, the students fill out their response sheets, and then each student reads the comments on his or her sheet aloud. The writer finally collects all the response sheets to us as a basis for revision. |
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