Writing and It's Stages
The traditional approach to writing instruction, often called ‘creative writing’ has been used in elementary school for the past 20 years. This traditional approach has emphasized the finished product, not what students did while they were writing. In this approach students practiced writing; they did not learn how to write.
In recent years, however, the emphasis in writing instruction has shifted from the product of writing to the process involved in creating the product. The teacher’s role has shifted from merely evaluating this end product to working with students throughout the writing process. The writing process is a series of stages of activities that writers move through as they compose. These stages have been delineated by such authorities in the field of composition as james Brittion (1978). Janetemig (1971), Donald graves (1983), and Donald murray (1984).
The names given to the stages vary, but they generally fall into five categories: (a) prewriting, (b) drafting, (c) revising, (d) editing, and (e) sharing.
Stage-1 Prewriting
Prewriting is the getting-ready-to write stage; Murray (1982) believes that up to 70% of writing time should be spent in prewriting. Prewriting provides the background for writing. At this stage, students learn about the structure of stories, poems, letters, and other written language forms. It is at this stage that students choose topics and generate ideas for writing. For the best work, students should choose their own topics. They also make decisions about their purpose for writing and the audience.
Choosing topics- Choosing topics can be difficult of initial writers who usually depends on their teachers for this. At first, these dependent students will argue that they do not know what to write about. However, teachers can help them brainstorm a list of three or four topics and then choose the one topic they are most interested in and know the most about. Students who feel they cannot generate any writing topics are often surprised that they have so many options available. Then through prewriting activities, students talk, draw pictures, read and even write to develop their topics. Asking students to choose their own topics for writing does not mean that teachers should never give writing assignments. Teachers can specify the writing form – journals, stories, poems, reports, and so on – but students should choose their own content.
Considering audience and purpose- As they prepare to write, students need to know for whom and why they are writing. Is it primarily for themselves, to express and clarify their own ideas and feelings? Or are they writing for others, to entertain, to inform, or to persuade to a particular course of action? Students need real purposes for writing, and their writing must be shared with genuine audiences. Teachers are not only one possible audience. In fact classmates, younger children, parents, the community and children’s authors are also possible audiences. These audiences and considerations of purpose will influence the decisions students' make throughout the writing process.
Considering the form of writing- One of the most important considerations is the form the writing will take: a story, a letter, a poem, or diary entry? It is possible that the same writing assignment could be handled in any one of these ways. The teacher’s role in this stage is two-fold: (a) to allow students to participate in decisions about purpose, audience, topic, and form: and (b) to provide a variety of idea-gathering activities. These activities called “rehearsal,” help students prepare for writing. They may make many forms, including brainstorming, drawing, talking, note-taking, and clustering, role-playing, and class collaboration compositions.
Brainstorming- One good way to generate and collect ideas for writing is brainstorming, a way of rapidly listing all the things that come in mind. Students can brainstorm individually, in small groups, or as a class to help them discover what they already know about a topic. Brainstorming encourages the free flow of ideas; all ideas are accepted without criticism or judgment. Brainstorming takes only a few minutes, but after the list is complete, students will have many ideas and words they can use in their writing.
Drawing- For young children drawing is an excellent way to gather and organize their ideas for writing. Primary grade teachers often notice that students draw before they begin to write and thinking that they are eating their dessert before their meat and vegetables, insist that they write first. But many young children cannot. Drawing is a necessary form of organizing compositions for these young writers (Dyson, 1983)
Talking-Too often the value of talk is ignored in the classroom but, it is an important classroom teaching-learning tool. Students can talk with the classmates to share Ideas about possible writing topics out was to express an idea, and ask questions, students read and react to each other's writing. They also participate in class discussions about Writing forms, elements of story structure, and other -writing-related issues.
Note-taking-When students are preparing to write reports, they take notes to remember important pieces of information to include their reports, and Students can also note key words to help them prepare to write in other forms, too. For ex-ample, before writing a story, students may want to list four or five characteristics of their main character or to write down the refrain a character will repeat in a repetition story.
Clustering -The process is similar to brainstorming except that all the words generated are circled and linked to the nucleus word, the result is a web-like diagram rather than a list this strategy, like other prewriting strategies, helps students discover what they already know about a topic. In clus-tering, the ideas are triggered by associating one Idea with another.
Reading- Reading and writing are closely linked activities. Children read to get ideas for their writing and to investigate the structure of various written forms. Reading is another form of experience, and writers need a variety of experiences to draw on as they write.
Stage-2 Drafting
In the process approach to writing, students write and refine their compositions through a series of drafts. During the drafting stage, students focus on getting their Ideas down on paper. Because writers do not begin to write with their compositions already composed in their minds, the usually begin with tentative ideas whit they developed through prewriting activities. The rough draft stage is the time to pour out ideas, with little concern about spelling, punctuation, and other Mechanical errors. As' Students & move through successive drafts, they delete sections of text, add others, and rearrange them.
Stage 3 Revising
During the revising stage, writers refine their ideas. Often a student-writer break the writing process cycle as Soon as they complete the first draft of their composition, believing that once their ideas are jotted down their writing task is complete. Experienced writers, however, know they must turn to readers for reactions and revise on the basis of these comments. Revision is not just polishing writing; it is meeting the needs of readers through Changing, adding, deleting, and rearrang-ing material.
Using Conferences- A good way to obtain readers' reactions is by using conferences in which students read their compositions to small groups of classmates, who then respond to them. At first, the teacher sits in on these writing conferences to model appropriate behavior. Students need to learn how to react to others' writ-ing in these conferences so that their comments are not destructive. Their first re-sponses must be positive, such as telling what they like best about the piece. Ask-ing the writer questions is often helpful in clarifying ideas and generating new directions. Students may ask the writer questions about Parts of the draft that were unclear and about interesting parts that they would like to see develop more fully. Often these confer-ences conclude with the writer explaining what he or she plans to do next with the composition.Writer use the reactions receive in these conferences to improve their work, to make it clearer and more interesting.
Other Types of Conferences-There are other types of writing conferences as well as the small group revising conference. Anytime a student meets with the teacher or a classmate about a piece of writing, the interaction is called a confer-ence (Graves, 1983). Often these conferences last only a minute or two, "St-it-they help a writer solve a problem or make a decision in order to continue writing. Sometimes, too, the teacher will hold a conference with the entire class.
Stage 4: Editing
Editing is putting the piece of writing into its final form. Until this stage, the focus has been on the content of students writing. In this stage, the focus changes from a content form and students polish their writing by rearranging words and cor-recting spelling, punctuation, and other mechanical errors. The goal here is to make the writing -Optimally readable" (Smith, 1982).
The Mechanics of Writing-Mechanics are the conventions used to make writ-ing "optimally readable!' They include capitalization? punctuation, spelling, us-age," and formatting considerations specific to the presentation of poetic forms, scripts, and letters. The use of commonly accepted conventions is a courtesy to those who will read the composition.The most effective way to teach these mechanical skills is during the editing stage of the writing process rather than though workbook exercises.
Proofreading- Students begin editing each composition by proofreading and marking possible errors. Next, they seek help from another student, and finally, they have a conference with the teacher. Proofreading requires special reading skills. King (1985) points out that proofreading is not the same as regular “reading because reading is taking meaning from the printed page—not words”(p. 109) in contrast, proofreading requires word-by-word reading and attention to, form letters, spelling, capital letters and punctuation marks—rather than to meaning. It is important, therefore, to take ample time to explain what proofreading is and to demonstrate how it differs from regular reading. Teachers can take a piece of student writing and copy it on the chalkboard or display it on an overhead projector. Then they read it through slowly, softly pronouncing each word, circling possible mis-spellings, and marking other mechanical errors. Some errors can be corrected with special proofreader's marks. Students enjoy using these marks, the same ones that adult authors use.
Editing checklists can also be used to help students focus on particular categories of errors in their compositions. Teachers can develop these checklists with items appropriate for their grade level. A first-grade checklist, for example, might include items about capital letters at the beginning of sentences and periods at the-end- of sentences. In contrast, a middle grade includes items about paragraph indentation and spelling homonyms correctly. Proofreader's marks and editing checklists are two tools for helping students learn to locate and correct the mechanical errors in their compositions.
Stage-6 Sharing
In this final stage, sharing, students bring the composition. to life by publishing their writing or sharing it orally with an appropriate audience, Students read their writing to classmates, or share it with larger audiences through hardcover books that are placed in the class or school library. In each of these cases, students are communicating with genuine. audiences.
Bookmaking- One of the most popular ways, to share students' writing in the elementary grades is by making and binding books. Simple booklets can be made by folding a sheet of paper into quarters, like a greeting card. Students write the ti-tle on the front and have three sides remaining for their compositions. They can also construct books by stapling sheets of writing paper together.
Magazines for Student Writing- Students can also submit their stories, poems, and other pieces of writing to magazines that publish children writing. Some magazines also accept artwork accompanying the compositions.
Responding to Student Writing- The teacher's role should not be restricted to that of evaluator. Instead, teachers should read students' writing for information, for enjoyment, and for all of the other purposes that other readers do. In-deed much of Student's writing should never by evaluated, but should simply be shared with the teacher as a “trusted adult" (Martin, D'Arcy, Newton, & Parker, 197 When evaluation is necessary, teachers might ask students to choose several pieces from their writing folders that they wish 'to submit for grading.
To measure students' growth in writing, it is not always necessary to evaluate their finished products (Tway, 1980). Teachers can make judgments .about stu-dents' Progress in Other ways. One of the best ways is by observing students as they write, noting whether or not they engage in prewriting activities, whether or not they focus on content rather than mechanics in their rough drafts, and whether or not they participate in revision conferences. When teachers evaluate students' progress in using the process approach, they chart student’s development and use this information in determining stu-dents' grades and the quality of their written products. Learning to use the writing process is of far greater importance to students' future writing achievement than the quality of a particular composition.