The Writing Process
This year, as we write paragraphs, essays, stories, and letters, we are writing for a purpose. When we are finished with a piece of writing, we want to feel like we put in our best effort. To help us feel that way, there is a “writing process” that we go through. This process has five stages:
Pre-Writing
Pre-writing is the hardest stage because it is when we do all of our brainstorming, thinking, organizing of our ideas, and planning. During this stage, we use a graphic organizer to help us organize our ideas and make a plan. Some decisions that we might need to make include:
- What is my purpose in writing? What is the main point I want to make?
- Who is my audience going to be?
- How do I want my writing to sound?
Do I need to do any further research?
Drafting
This is one of the easiest stages because all of our ideas are already written down and organized on the graphic organizer! All we have to do is copy the sentences from the graphic organizer into paragraph form in the correct order! However, if we wrote phrases instead of complete sentences on the graphic organizer, then we do need to put some thought into how we can turn the phrases into sentences, and how we can show a connection between details (examples, reasons, events) and the main idea they are supporting. We also want to remember to check things off the graphic organizer as we go, and know where to start new paragraphs if we are writing an essay or story. This stage results in the first draft or rough draft.
Revising
This is a fun stage because we get to back through our writing and see if there are things we can do to make it better. Can we improve “word choice” or “sentence fluency”? Do we have good transitions and interesting vocabulary? Do we have a variety of sentence types? Could we move a prepositional phrase to the beginning of the sentence? During this stage, it will be helpful to have the rubric in front of you so that you can see if you missed anything.
Editing
This is the stage when we are checking for what we call “conventions.” This is the last row of the rubric! We check spelling, use of punctuation (commas, periods, quotation marks), capitalization, grammar, indenting for paragraphs…
Publishing
After the revising and editing, our rough draft might have a lot of comments written on it, things crossed out, arrows drawn to new ideas, transition words circled, and perhaps a lot of color! In this stage of publishing, we simply write copy our fixed-up rough draft into a beautiful final draft. It can be written in your best handwriting, or it can be typed. You will want to make sure the left margin is nice and straight, and the indents are clear. Make sure you have space between your words, and that it’s easy to see the commas and periods!
