Activities

1. List possible ways you can plan what you want to write in any writing assignment.
   
   
2. Brainstorm the strategies you normally use for planning, revising, editing, and rewriting when you are faced with the task of writing.

3. Summarize your memories of a particular event using the freewrite technique.
   
   
4. Modify a short story through the “pass it on” writing activity.

5. Critique and assess a peer’s writing by giving feedback about where writing can be improved and where writing was especially effective.

Answer Key/Rubric

1. Student will list ways he/she plans to write a writing assignment.  Answers will vary depending upon student but can include graphic organizers, outlines, freewrites, brainstorming, drawing, or any other planning method used in class.  Note that although the planning may not have been explicitly taught in class, students develop numerous unconventional strategies in developing writing.  Students may “brainstorm on the fly” or may do much of their planning in their heads rather than on paper.  Allow all types of answers so that the individual writing process can be assessed and instruction can follow from individual methods.
   
   
2. Students will list numerous ways they plan, revise, edit, and rewrite any writing assignment.

• Plan – the initial process of idea generation, organization into logical sections
• Revise – after the initial piece is written, students will read it over to ensure that details are fully developed using rich, descriptive language.  Strategies can include reading it alone or reading it aloud to a peer.  Revisions can be focused on a particular element, such as language use, detail, etc. 
• Edit – in this process, students look for grammar and usage errors, often based on a targeted mini-lesson or an editing checklist.
• Rewrite – in this “publishing” step, students seek to produce a polished product.

3. Student will use the freewrite technique to develop initial ideas for writing.  In freewriting, students are instructed to write for a set amount of time (generally 2-3 minutes) without stopping.  In freewriting, students may write ideas for the topic and should be encouraged to write anything that comes into their minds.  This can include ideas such as “I have nothing to write” or “I hate writing.”  Freewriting serves as a method to overcome a block and to generate ideas.
   
   
4. In the “pass it on” writing activity, students broken into writing teams of about 5 students and are given a single prompt on which to write.  To demonstrate that writing often does not go as planned, the first student begins the story following the prompt (fun topics such as, “A funny thing happened on my way home from school yesterday…” can be used).  After 2 minutes, the first student passes the story on to the second student.  Give the second (and subsequent students) about a minute to read what has already been written and then give them 2 minutes to continue the story.  Move the story through the group following the same pattern.  At the end, the groups can read their stories aloud to the class.  This activity demonstrates how, although we often plan our writing, sometimes the end result is not exactly what writers envision.  However, when we keep writing, we do get a final product.
   
   
5. Student will critique a peer’s writing giving a set number of points of suggestion and points of encouragement (this can be any number of feedback points but generally 3 for each is a good starting point).  Student should critique the writing for clarity of ideas, inclusion of descriptive language, awareness of purpose and audience, and grammatical/usage errors.  As peer editing can be new to some students, explicit modeling of expectations should be done.  Be aware that this can be an intimidating process for some students and that as classroom culture is developed, the peer editing process should become smoother.