1. What is Writing? Please brainstorm ideas in your journal notebook.

2. What is Writing? Writing is a process, not a single activity. It involves lots of actions, steps, behaviors, thoughts, and changes. Let’s brainstorm some of these activities now as a class!

3. Writing Process Drafting words and ideas Thinking of a topic Planning Note-taking Thinking on paper Spelling Typing handwriting Proofreading Reading what you already have written Organizing Considering your audience Listing Punctuating Making priorities

4. The Writing Process Prewriting: - brainstorm ideas - use a graphic organizer Drafting: - begin to draft your writing piece - keep writing! Don’t throw out anything!

5. Writing Process Revising: - Fix major problems: sentence structure or paragraph rewriting Editing/Proofreading: - Fix minor errors: spelling, punctuation, grammar usage

6. Writing Process Publishing: - Final draft is published! The writer gets to share ideas and their final writing piece with their audience!

7. What do you think of the following paragraph? Every night at camp, when we were totally tired out from playing the game, we would all sort of fall down in a big pile on the floor of our cabin. We would just laugh and laugh – it was really so much fun. Then, after we would calm down a little bit, we would suddenly be very, very hungry. Our counselor would be quite mad that our cabin was always awake after light out, but hopefully we could get her to just chill out and let us eat chips and stuff we really weren’t supposed to have at camp.

8. Really Bad Words When writing, there are words writers should try to avoid because they are over- used and are not descriptive! We call these the “REALLY BAD WORDS!”

9. REALLY BAD WORDS Absolutely All (a) big Completely Definitely Just Kind of (a) little Quite Really So Sort of Totally Very Would

10. A Revised Paragraph without REALLY BAD WORDS At night, after we were exhausted from playing the game, we collapsed in a heap on the floor of the cabin. We lay there in a tangle of arms and legs and shook with giggles. When the laughter died out, hunger took over. We were starving. We drove our counselor crazy that summer because when the other cabins were quiet and dark, ours was alive with the sounds of eight girls shrieking, roughhousing, and rattling bags of forbidden junk food.

11. REALLY BAD WORDS When revising, I don’t expect you to rewrite every sentence. However, I do want you to take a hard look at your Really Bad Words and determine how you can fix your sentence to make it stronger! “Good writing is lean and confident.” - William Zinsser