9 Steps sounds like a lot, and it is, but for the students who experience these 9 steps towards learning a particular writing genre, it provides them with structure, support and a procedure for composing quality pieces of text.
#1 - Brainstorming
At the beginning of any writing composition, the students must already be familiar with the genre that they are expected to create. They will have been exposed to a variety of examples, often from a variety of mediums and they may have even experimented with select features from the genre to be studied. An example of this can be learning and using numbered lists before attempting to write a recipe instructions, or playing with rhyming patterns before writing a Limerick. I usually provide students with some sort of template for their brainstorming stage. It is typically a simple graphic organiser that I feel best suits the particular genre to be studied. Spelling and grammar are not the focus of this stage! This is the time for writing and ideas to be free flowing and as raw as possible. I encourage students to jot down anything that pops into their heads according to our previous discussions about the genre. It's not a time to focus on a title or the quantity of text either, brainstorming is an organic process and can be done individually or with partners or small groups.
The Writing Process in 5G...
#2 - Planning
Once students have a plethora of ideas and are excited about all the possibilities of what they can choose to write about, I give them a formal and more detailed graphic organiser that has sections relevant to the structure of the writing genre. Please take a look at some examples here. In this stage, they're expected to begin to organise their ideas into appropriate categories and a logical order. Again, spelling and grammar are not the focus yet so at times their organisers can appear somewhat chaotic. This stage is about key words or phrases, planning a solid ending, putting best ideas first, discarding or including information and getting an idea of what each paragraph (or section) will focus on. It is at this early stage that I inform the students on the evaluation process (Step 8). I make available to them the assessment criteria either in the form of a rubric or checklist so that they are all aware of the expectations of the genre and for the year level.
#3 - Drafting
Then the fun begins! While drafting, students are normally surrounded by their brainstorm, their plan, the assessment criteria, a dictionary and they then require time and a quiet classroom to produce their written draft. I have found that once armed with their plan, students write eagerly and quickly because they have organised support for each part of the text. It can make the task less daunting for those who struggle for ideas or with sentence structure because they are putting their existing ideas into practice rather than being expected to create and write simultaneously. At this stage I am often asked (much to my amusement) "Mrs Saunders, is it ok if I add in things that aren't on my plan?" to which I wholeheartedly reply "Yes! What a great way to make your writing come alive!". At the end of this process, students are intensely proud of their efforts and feel confident about their text.
#4 - Editing
Editing. Finding the motivation to go back to work when you feel 'finished' can be particularly difficult. I always deliberately give students a period of at least few days in between writing their draft attempts and the editing process to permit their minds to disengage from their work so that they come to the editing stage with 'fresh eyes'. The Saunders style of editing is quite structured. It is done indivudally with a red pen. Each student follows a set of questions about the text and students must examine their own draft according to these questions. I organise my questions under the headings COPS (Capitals, Organisation, Punctuation and Spelling) as first made popular by Mulcahy, Marfo & Peat. I have , however, re-jigged their initial process so that it more aptly maches the needs of my writers and it can be viewed here. The students complete each section by using their red pen in a different way, either circling, underlining, crossing out or using asterisks to add information at the end of the draft. Ony the author can edit their own work.
#5 - Conferencing
The purpose of conferencing for my students is to choose someone they trust in the class to read their edited work and give them permission to make suggestions for improvement before it is seen by Mrs S. This is the final stage before it's marked and it is a social process. The students sit with a trusted partner, their drafts, a green pen and the conferencing questions. While reading their friend's work, they use the green pen to identify any potential errors or problems that the author may have missed. It is also surreptitiously a method that I can use to assess their Word Study skills. Only after their peer conference are the students able to give me their drafts for marking.
#6 - Marking
Of course, by this stage I am usually already familiar with much of the content of what each student has written but it is the first time I am able to read, in detail, the work of my students. Hopefully the editing and conferencing process has managed to 'catch' many of the common errors students in this age group tend to make but I ensure that I use a pen (other than red or green obviously) to fix any remaining problems with the text. I am marking spelling, capitalisation, grammar, syntax, title issues, paragrah spacing, suggesting omissions, making word substitutions and checking the accuracy of both the editing and conferencing.
#7 - Publishing
One of the most creative parts of the process is that of publishing because there are so many ways students can publish written work. Using ebook apps, publishing online, handwriting brochures or posters, writing on speech cards, typing an email to various audiences, making a class book etc the possibilities are endless! Once we've established the method of publishing, students are expected to take all the editing, conferencing and marking suggestions into account when re-writing their text.
#9 - Sharing
At the final stage, I feel it is essential to celebrate their learning. There are a multitude of ways to do this! In the past I have held parent nights to share student work, published them online (this website has many examples), invited other classes in the school to observe and read our work, exchanged letters with penpals interstate and of course, displayed published writing in the classroom. Technology clearly offers students and teachers many more ways of sharing quality writing. Getting to this ninth stage of the process is an incredibly rewarding feeling and students can look back and know that they totally rocked that writing genre!
#8 - Evaluating
The evaluation process is absolutely vital and I have, at times, observed it being done privately by teachers and not made public to the students to whom it applies - I disagree with this process though. I try very hard to involve them in this process because just because they've finished the task, does not mean they've finished their learning! The rubric or equivalent assessment tool is now applied to the student's work and I frequently ask students to use a yellow highlighter to self-assess their work before I do. I will then assess with an alternate coloured highlighter and subsequently agree with them or change their assessment according to my professional judgment on their work. In this way, they are involved in the entire writing and learning process.