In this article, we describe student-centered routines that prepare students for success on ambitious text-based writing assignments. Based on research showing the important role that peer collaboration and classroom discussion play in developing students' thinking, these routines support students to 'try out' their ideas, learn from the…

In writing instruction, teachers often struggle with developing engaging and interactive activities given constraints such as large classes and packed teaching schedules. A purposeful and appealing pre-task can energize the writing process and set the context for the subsequent writing task. With this purpose in mind, the author designed the…

Improve students' writing skills and boost their assessment scores while adding arts education, creativity, and fun to your writing curriculum. With this vibrant resource, improving writing skills goes hand-in-hand with improving test scores. Students learn how to use acting and visualization as prewriting activities to help them connect writing…

Presents a procedural model for use as a prewriting strategy to help students "decenter" or distance themselves from their writing and avoid the generalities that characterize egocentric writing. The model provides opposing viewpoints in a student's analysis of problems or issues. (HTH)

Semantic mapping is offered as a prewriting strategy to help students (of all ages) with hearing impairments organize and structure their writing. Semantic mapping can offer these students a visual access to the writing process. (DB)

Describes method in which students write a draft requiring some writing skill before learning about that skill. Concludes that predrafting (1) enforces first-drafting; (2) shows students their natural writing abilities; (3) emphasizes discovery of substance first, rules and form second; (4) promotes an active student role; (5) arranges learning in…

Discusses the heuristic role of yes-no questions in college composition and provides two such methods for brainstorming and focusing. Presents a binary graph device ("Matrix") that correlates subjects and concerns to generate yes-no questions. Also presents a flow-chart model structuring information in the question-evidence-resolution pattern. (JG)

Writing strategies encourage beginning writers to collect, explore, and focus ideas. This paper presents a rationale for fusing the word processor with the writing process and offers a series of pre-writing strategies, such as brainstorming, clustering and chunk writing, to help learning-disabled writers begin writing. (Author/PB)

Teaching writing as a process is advocated to enhance a student's metacognitive skills and understanding of writing. The process can be used with students who have mild disabilities. Prewriting techniques such as clustering and color coding are explained, along with three teacher options for prewriting instruction to address class and student…

Describes four prewriting techniques that elementary and middle grade students can use to gather and organize ideas for writing, and by so doing, cure writer's block. Techniques discussed are: (1) brainstorming; (2) clustering; (3) freewriting; and (4) cubing.

The processes of prewriting, writing, revising, and proofreading are outlined in this four-page guide for writing center volunteers. Each section lists "things to remember" and provides ideas on "how to help students" when teaching these four stages of the writing process. (JW)

Presents techniques from Writing Across the Curriculum adapted to the foreign language classroom. Strategies for encouraging students to write more effectively in the foreign language are described. The strategies include assigning relevant topics, treating writing as a process, and responding to and evaluating student writing in a more…

The nine-step grid strategy provides prompts in both structure and content areas to improve the narrative writing skills of students with learning disabilities. The steps include developing a story grid with characters, setting, action, emotion, and so on; planning and writing the story; and completing both cognitive and technical edits. (DB)

Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

The expressive reading journal aims to break through student passivity by asking students to write extensively and expressively about what they read, each time they read, and to make discoveries and take possession of what they read. This type of journal in the academic course depends for its usefulness on the nature of expressive language, the…