Writing Strategies

Writing Strategies

Prewrite

One writing strategy that I have seen is giving the student an idea and having them draw a picture. Drawing a picture of all of the events that the students needs to write about helps them to organize their thoughts. The picture also helps them to be creative in their story telling through the picture. The prewrite picture strategy also allows the students to have fun when they are beginning the writing process. Keeping writing fun is so important since it is an important skill that students need to learn. A picture can also help the teacher to know what the student it trying to write about. In both my practicum and my student teaching experience I have seen this strategy used.

Four square

This writing strategy involves a piece of paper with a center line on it and four squares around. In the center line the teacher writes a topic sentence such as “my school is the best because”. The students then have to write a sentence in three of the boxes for why they think their school is the best. They have to use some descriptive in the sentences. This means they can just say “I like music” they have to say something such as “music is fun because we get to sing”. In the fourth square they write a sentence about how they feel about the topic. In this case they would write a sentence about how they feel about their school. After they have finished their four square they write a paragraph using their sentences. To expand this activity the teacher can then have the students add more about their topics so they have a well developed story.

Currently my school uses this strategy. The students have to write a story from this form every few weeks with different topics. This form really helps them to gather their thoughts so that they can write on topic.

The Hamburger Strategy

This strategy comes from the Buffalo education. In this strategy a visual of a hamburger is used. This visual helps the students to see all the parts of writing that they need to include and how they are laid out. I think this is a great visualization because it helps the students to relate the parts of writing a paragraph to a visual that is very familiar to them. This would be a great visual to have hanging up in the room. This would allow the students to be able to see this picture and to remember the parts of a paragraph. http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/writingstrategies/Toolbox/Strategies_Toolkit.html

Brainstorming Kit

This strategy is also from the Buffalo education website. This brainstorming kit offers questions for students to answer before they start writing. There are separate questions for expository and creative writing. I really liked these questions. They were very simple for students to follow and really helped them to think about what they were going to write and who they were writing for. The questions would be great to have in each students writing folder or hanging up in the room for them to refer to when they are writing. Overall this website had a lot of helpful writing tips and ideas for teachers to use with their students. http://gse.buffalo.edu/org/writingstrategies/Toolbox/Brainstorming_Toolkit.html

Work with words relevant to students lives

According to the national writing project it is important to relate students writing and vocabulary to their everyday lives. Students become more excited about learning when they can relate to what they are learning about. If teachers allow students to write about things that happen in their everyday lives, then students will be more enthusiastic about the writing process. This article also suggests taking the letters of the alphabet and having the students find one word that describes them. They can then elaborate on why this word describes them based on the types of things that they do in their everyday lives. http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922