The Final Stage During Which You Share Your Writing

The Writing Process: Steps to Writing Success

What Is the Writing Process

What is the Writing Process?

Writing is a complex combination of skills which is best taught by breaking down the process. The writing process involves a series of steps to follow in producing a finished piece of writing. Educators have found that by focusing on the process of writing, almost everyone learns to write successfully. By breaking down writing step-by-step, the mystery is removed and writer's block is reduced. Most importantly, students discover the benefits of constructive feedback on their writing, and they progressively master, and even enjoy, writing.

Although they will often overlap, and sometimes students will move back and forth between them, the writing process can generally be broken down stages. When a student learns to internalize the 5 steps of the writing process, he or she will likely produce a logical and well-written composition.

Stages of the Writing Process

Prewriting: This is the planning phase of the writing process, when students brainstorm, research, gather and outline ideas, often using diagrams for mapping out their thoughts. Audience and purpose should be considered at this point, and for the older students, a working thesis statement needs to be started.
Drafting: Students create their initial composition by writing down all their ideas in an organized way to convey a particular idea or present an argument. Audience and purpose need to be finalized.
Revising: Students review, modify, and reorganize their work by rearranging, adding, or deleting content, and by making the tone, style, and content appropriate for the intended audience. The goal of this phase of the writing process is to improve the draft.
Editing: At this point in the writing process, writers proofread and correct errors in grammar and mechanics, and edit to improve style and clarity. Having another writer's feedback in this stage is helpful.
Publishing: In this last step of the writing process, the final writing is shared with the group. Sharing can be accomplished in a variety of ways, and with the help of computers, it can even be printed or published online.

Why Is the Writing Process Important?

Time4Writing emphasizes the writing process because it emphasizes the value of dialogue as a teaching technique. Teaching the writing process empowers students by asking them to talk about their writing at every step of the writing process. Students submit work according to a set schedule of lessons and assignments, and instructors provide feedback on the work, mixing encouragement with constructive criticism. Students apply these comments to the next step in that assignment. Both exchange comments about the writing, creating a conversation between instructor and student — both about the content of the writing and about the process of doing the work.

How Time4Writing Works

Some Perspective on the Traditions and Real World Use

Historically, educators have struggled with the challenge of teaching students how to write well, traditionally focusing on the finished product. Since the 1970s, writing instruction has been changing. Teachers no longer emphasize the finished product; instead, they teach the "writing process." One of the strengths of the structure of the writing process is its usefulness for a wide range of diverse learners. Students are taught a variety of styles to structure their thinking, ranging from analytical outlines to highly visual graphic organizers. Students explore ways for organizing and visualizing their ideas that is the most effective for them. For instance, many right-brained visual thinkers find the highly-graphical spatial bubble-diagram organizers most effective in the pre-writing stage. Verbal thinkers may like to use lists, charts and free writing to organize their thoughts.

At Time4Writing, the process begins with this kind of brainstorming. Some advanced writers will try to start with a prewriting outline or collection of ideas that exists only in their head, but they are required to put it in writing, either by way of a graphic organizer or in a more linear format, like listing or free writing. Students also create a topical outline to help organize their ideas, and the advanced students are required to develop a working thesis statement. The goal is for students to become personally invested in their work.

How Time4Writing Teaches the Writing Process

For many students, writing can be intimidating, upsetting and mystifying. Parents who try to teach writing find that their children can be defensive about any criticism on their writing, and without any kind of teacher's guide, critiquing their children's writing can be a surprisingly difficult task and even create power struggles. At Time4Writing, because the emphasis is on the process of writing rather than the finished product, much of the sensitivity about receiving constructive criticism is eliminated; in fact, comments from students indicate they love the feedback! By approaching writing as a process, instructors encourage students to postpone closure on a piece of writing until they have explored all of its possibilities. Breaking the act of writing down into distinct steps enables students to maintain perspective on their writing, to understand that the feedback is about a specific aspect of their writing, and to discover they can master – – and yes – – even enjoy writing!

The Writing Process for Elementary Students

Although the writing process is the approach taught and used in all Time4Writing courses, there are two distinct Time4Writing Narrative & Informative Writing elementary writing courses that focus on helping students internalize the process so that it becomes their natural way of approaching writing assignments.

Elementary School Narrative Writing –This 8-week course takes advantage of children's innate curiosity about the animal kingdom to teach prewriting, planning, drafting, revision, and editing through the telling of wild animal tales.

Elementary School Informative Writing – Using multimedia tools, young writers will stretch their writing muscles by researching a wild animal and then creating a multimedia slideshow to showcase their findings. This course, for advanced students with some technical know-how, incorporates the full writing process from beginning to end.