Building Writing Skills
Even though there’s been a lot of emphasis on science, technology, math and engineering, even as early as primary school, it’s still important to learn how to write.
Writing is a skill that will benefit them as they grow and are assigned projects like essays and research papers. Communicating easily and efficiently will benefit your students far beyond school.
Before Writing
The process of writing begins before fingers hit keyboard. The first thing to do is to ask a series of questions. These include:
• Who is the audience?
• Why are they interested in — or why should they be interested in — this topic?
• What does the audience need to know?
• How would the audience’s own experience influence them on this topic?
• What do you hope the audience will gain?
Next, write down all the ideas that come to mind regarding the topic. This is a brainstorming exercise, so it doesn’t have to be precise. Keep in mind the purpose of the writing assignment. Finally, organize those ideas into an outline or other map for your writing. This can include source material, questions to be answered in more.
Writing
Using the roadmap, start to write in memoir write class. Use clear, concise language. Don’t use more words than you need to and don’t use bigger words to try to make the writing sound smart; it really does the opposite. Write a strong topic sentence for each paragraph and smooth transitions between ideas and paragraphs. Each sentence in the paragraph should build on the topic sentence and any unnecessary sentences should be taken out.
Editing
Grammar and mechanics are still important. Students need to carefully proofread their writing before they turn it in, checking for typos, spelling errors and punctuation errors. Some common errors include run-on sentences, comma splices, incomplete sentences and subject/verb agreement errors. A good tip is to read the work out loud; it’s easy to catch unnecessary sentences or errors that way.
Plan writing assignments so that there’s time to take a break and come back to the work for editing before it’s turned in.
