1. Abell & Atherton Educational Consulting, Inc.
The Writing Process
Abell & Atherton Educational Consulting, Inc.
Abell & Atherton

2. Prewriting
Talking (sharing ideas, discussion of topic and their views, role-playing, persuasion, etc.)
Reading and analyzing models (backmapping, analysis of format and development, etc.)
Brainstorming
Mapping
Planning
Webbing
Story boarding, etc.
Creating a writer’s plan, which considers audience, purpose, format, and ideas
Researching
Abell & Atherton

3. Drafting Modeling Use Other students’ writing Professional writing
Your writing
Provide ample time and space to write
Provide tools to make drafting more fun and easier (post it notes, gel pens, tape, scissors, etc.)
Conference with students throughout
Remind students of the importance of treating drafting as a step separate from editing
Abell & Atherton

4. Revising
Help students to learn to try a new approach if the one they’ve tried isn’t working.
Make sure all the anticipated needs of the audience are met for the particular purpose/ text.
Model each revision strategy using your own work; then send students back to revise their own.
Have revision conferences in which students come to you with a question
Use sentence combining to build complex sentences
Use ARMS to help writers understand what “revision” means
Abell & Atherton

5. ARMS Add – (details, snapshots, dialogue, examples, etc.)
Remove – (distractors, unnecessary dialogue, details that don’t fit, weak ideas)
Move – (words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs)
Substitute – (more powerful words, stronger verbs for adverbs)

6. Editing Model and practice editing together
Use students’ own work as good models or as drill for sentence error correction
Teach editing skills throughout the year
Give students self-editing checklists
Set up editing groups, with an “expert” in charge of each main focus (Capitalization, punctuation, etc.)
Use sentence combining exercises for editing as well as revising skills.
Have editing conferences, focusing on only one correctness issue at a time
Use CUPS
Abell & Atherton

7. CUPS
Capitalization
Usage
Punctuation
Spelling

8. Publishing
Technology and the internet (Blogs, webcasts, web pages, etc.)
Exchange writing with other classes and students
Read to principal
Display on community or school bulletin board
Author’s chair
Mail or
Newsletters
Media center
Pop-up or blank books for the school library
Pen pals
Gifts
“If you give writers only one thing, give them an audience.”
Peter Elbow
Abell & Atherton