When to Do What in the Writing Process

First Steps in Following the Writing Process

Shona Rose
Tacy Gamel

Fisher, Frey, and Hattie, in Visible Learning for Literacy, talk about the importance of knowing when to use strategies. It reminds me of what our technology gurus always tell us. Purposefully match your technology to what you are trying to teach. Don’t just throw something in just to check off a box that you used technology. The writing process is no different. There are so many things you could have students do “to” their papers. Each of those belongs in the right phase of the writing process. Time and place: the “location, location, location” emphasis in writing pedagogy.

One of my teacher friends created a set of cards for students to use after they had composed their papers. It was her hope that students could use the cards to re-enter, revise, and edit their papers. She was just crushed when the papers came back relatively unchanged. Perhaps the flaw was not in the cards and tasks, but the timing and execution of those activities throughout the writing process. We sat down together and labeled her cards to explore when these activities might be more productive for students. Here are our initial thoughts.

Prewriting:

Seeds. Lots of them. Spread them around, hoping that some will germinate. Pluck out those that are too close to each other or crowd for space. That allows you to select the plant you want to grow, fertilize, water, protect and shelter until it is strong enough to flower and produce more fruit.

Students seem to think prewriting is a chore and not a storehouse of possibilities. They think it is a one time, specific thing that they must do for each paper. Create a map. Make an outline. Do a quicklist. These things are all powerful, but they do not create a storehouse of ideas that connect to multiple papers and situations. Certainly, we need to teach students how to use a variety of prewriting strategies. But are we leaving out the ones that are most capable of getting students to realize they care at all? Blueprinting, trigger words, reading-writing connections, free association, sentence stubbs, reporter’s formula, listing, looping, pentad, hexagonal, cubing, classical invention, pictograms, graphs-charts-maps, quotes, drawing, beliefs and experiences, framing, music, imitation… All of these strategies get the mind connected to the schema of lived experiences unique to the individual. Things they actually know about, care about: ideas for which  they can invest energy and effort.

Then we teach them how to select from this storehouse of memory, expertise, experience and emotion to hone and shape their ideas into another form. Without activating desire, we begin without their ideas. Students are incapacitated with unknowing: I don’t have anything to say. We ask them to build an essay as one who is asked to build a house with no supplies, land, or foundation. Most of all, there is no need to build the idea. They don’t care... until we show them how they can see themselves in their writing, reading, and their response to life and school.

Then they might be ready to do the kind of prewriting needed to compose genres required for our standards and assessments. We have to do both. But too often, we forget to return to what is meaningful to students.

Drafting:

It’s not enough to have seeds. You have to actually plant them. Till the ground and stick them in the lined furrows or scatter them across the scraped soil. They have to write. And if we ask them to write, it should be important enough to be shared and used. Why would you do something that you have no intention of using? Why would you plant seeds and never water them? We do that when we don’t give student writing a voice.

I learned about “grouping” strategies when I first went to a New Jersey Writing Project in Texas Institute. Later, I learned more about it in Peter Elbow’s Community of Writers. Bluntly, here’s what I think. Kids need to read what they have read aloud. They don’t fix their mistakes because they don’t hear them. Or they don’t care enough about what they have written to invest the tedious energy to fix the errors. Or they don’t have enough experience hearing and reading good material to know what could be done. I’m not sure that kids realize that their words are supposed to do something to another person. That their words have power and affect others around them. When we give them a chance to share their work with others, we give them a voice. We give them a reason to write well. We show them how they can make changes for themselves and others. And frankly - adolescents care about other adolescents. They are more engaged and interested in sharing with people like themselves...not us.

Here’s the basic protocol:

1. Divide the writers into groups. The type/purpose/time available of your grouping will dictate how many people you place in each group.
2. The writer reads his piece aloud without disparaging it. They read directly from the piece. They can correct/add words if they notice something missing. No paraphrasing or telling is allowed.
3. Listeners focus on getting the “gist” of the piece.
4. The writer reads his piece a second time. Others listen for a specific “charge” according to the lesson objectives. Listeners record their ideas on a sticky note, card, or annotation bubble in a digital document. They explain their commentary to the writer and hand them the card or enter their comment on the digital document. Note: Listeners should explain what they wrote and tell why they selected it.
5. Repeat the information for each group member.

After working with the strategies over the years, I realized that students then need to explicitly reflect on what they experienced in the grouping. What did they learn about themselves as  writers?

Reflection:

1. Writers take the cards or annotations given by the group members and annotate their piece by highlighting the elements the group noticed about their writing.
2. What do the comments have in common, if anything?
3. What do the comments reveal about their strengths?
4. How can these strengths be applied to other places in the text they are composing now?
5. What elements can be applied to other compositions or work in other classes?
6. Students revise and set a goal for applying what they noticed in the next writing act.

Revision:

I forgot about the seeds metaphor and had to come back and revise. Sometimes an effective gardener will add plants to help the other plants grow. We planted marigolds next to the tomatoes to keep bugs away. That’s like adding a paragraph for explanation. Sometimes people grow plants in a nursery and replant them when they are developed enough to handle the weather. That reminds me of structuring an argumentative essay using Strawman and Concession as an organizational structure. You move the plants around to fit your purpose and timing. Other times, expert gardeners will take one plant and graft it onto a completely different plant. Writers do that too. They take what they have already composed, sometimes transforming it into a completely different genre.

In revision writing, students work on various elements: shaping or refining the organizational structure, focusing on craft, adding depth, making changes for clarity or word count. Mini-lessons and strategies provide students with tools to re-enter their writing. In our work with the Writing Pilot with the Texas Education Agency, Sally Heaton and I realized that there were several types of mini-lessons: Direct Instruction, Inquiry, and Deductive

Modeling a New Strategy/Direct Instruction

1. Show/Compose the model in front of students. (Modeled Writing/Think Aloud)
2. Students identify and mark a place in their writing to attempt the strategy.
3. Students compose/revise.
4. Students read/share the before and after.
5. Students determine which version is effective for their current writing purpose.

Mentor Text/Inquiry

1. Show a mentor text or sentence.
2. Explore the meaning, structure, and impact of the text.
1. What do you notice?
2. What surprises you?
3. How/why was that done?
1. Text structure
2. Craft
3. Genre characteristics
4. Mechanics
5. Etc.
3. Student revise/compose to imitate the structure or effect.
4. Or students can scan their writing to identify similar characteristics in their own writing (things they are already doing).

5. Create an anchor chart to represent the ideas that came from the discussion.
What did you notice? Effect on the reader

Why did the author do that? Purpose

How does this inform us as writers? Strategies/Tools

Ratiocination/Deductive

1. Share a “code”
2. Brainstorm solutions.
3. Students code their texts.
4. Students resolve the codes.

Once students have revised in one of these three methods, it is time for another grouping. This time, the rules are slightly different. The writer only reads a portion of the text. These can be done in small groups or in a large group/whole class debrief.

Sharing Revisions: A Grouping Protocol

1. Students read what they had already composed before learning the strategy.
1. Students read the sentence before the place they marked for revision.
2. Students read the focus of the revision.
3. Students read the sentence after the focus of their revision.  
2. Students now read the revision/composing.
1. Students read the sentence before the place they marked for revision.
2. Students read the revision/addition.
3. Students read the sentence after their revision.
3. Group members help the writer discuss the impact on the listener.
4. Students determine which version they would like to use.  

Editing:

Pruning. Editing is pruning. You cut out the stuff that has turned brown, eaten by insects, isn’t growing well. Or you brace it up like an Japanese bonsai artists - contemplating the aesthetics and effect of the piece so that the viewer has a pleasant experience.

Students are now ready to focus on the grammar, punctuation, spelling, and such. Two things seem very powerful: Clocking from the New Jersey Writing Institute and Gretchen Bernabei’s Grammar Keepers 101 placemat. Three things. You can use Ratiocination to edit as well.

Clocking: Throughout the unit of study, the teacher has been reviewing key points about grammar and mechanics. The teacher creates an anchor chart as items are addressed. When it comes time for formal editing, students take the most recent draft and number the lines. (How to add numbered lines in Microsoft Word.) Writers then gather all of their writing, placing the most lined draft at the top, and create a cover sheet with items the teacher or class has selected from the anchor chart. These are now the non-negotiables that students use to edit the papers.

Usually, I have the students side in inside and outside circles, facing each other. They give the entire stack of their work to the person across from them. Students write their name on the cover sheet next to the item they are editing. Then, they read/scan the paper to check for that particular item. If I am reading Shanna’s paper for dangling modifiers, I will write my name on the line, write the line numbers where I think she should check, and the last line that I have edited. “Shona, 32, 46, 89; last 102). Now the writer knows where she should begin checking as well as what point the paper has not been checked. They still have the responsibility to keep checking the paper, but have some examples to guide them. After a period of time (the teacher makes the call), time is called, papers are returned, and the outside circle rotates. The process repeats for a new item on the list.

Keepers 101 Chart: Can we just all agree that Gretchen Bernabei is a genius? Here is a link to her Grammar Keepers 101 Chart. I made a large copy of this tool to use as a writing placemat. Throughout the year, we teach the lessons with model texts and mentor sentences. Students write those examples in black ink. Then, they find or create examples from their own writing and record the response in another color of ink. When it is time to edit, students look at their writing goals, reference the chart, and edit their papers for those elements.

Ratiocination: We used ratiocination earlier to revise. The only difference now is in the choices you make for what students are looking for in their writing about grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Instead of revising for sentence beginnings or passive verbs or depth, students are looking for comma splices, misspelled words, etc.

Polishing/Proofreading:

I used to have a lovely philodendron. Over time, the leaves would get dusty or spotted with our harsh Amarillo water deposits. When company was coming, I’d wash off the leaves with a wet towel and sometimes would use a bit of mayonnaise to make them really shine. Writers need to revisit their work one more time before they invite people to peruse their hard work.

Are we forgetting this part of the process before we publish? This is the last chance before you turn in the paper...the last scan before you hit send...the last chance for saving face before you publish. You read with a pencil and make little marks or corrections if you have to turn in that copy. At the very least, you should look through all the red and green squiggleys and see if Microsoft found something you might need to fix. You correct last minute things as you read through, just to be sure. There’s always something.

Publishing:

There’s not much I want to say about HOW we go about publishing. But there’s a lot I want to say about WHY? To continue the metaphor: Why do we have plants anyway? Many reasons: food, medicine, entertainment. We don’t have plants because they have been artificially assigned to us in class. Writing should be no different.

Begin with the end in mind, we say. Why do kids know what we want them to do? Because the objective is on the board? Or do we begin our lessons with models of what their work should look like? I think we ask kids to write things they have never seen. I think we ask kids to write things that don’t exist in the real world. I think we assign things for kids to write and never teach them how to do it. STOP. Kids need models and examples. Find, compose, or keep good models of what you want students to create in your class.

Kids should complete their work, we say. But why would they want to do much of the work we assign? Especially if we never taught them how to do it in the first place? Not doing the work is probably a more emotionally healthy response. Part of composing and creating is connected to what we care about. When we don’t care, it’s just not worth the energy. Human nature. Truth, ya’all.

So part of our work as educators is to help kids understand what learning inspires them to do. How do we help them create and compose meaningful work for real audiences about things they care about? Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey have a lot to say about designing this kind of work in their new books, Text Dependent Questions. (There’s one for 3-5 and 6-12. Good stuff.)