The Writing Process: Introduction

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

When you brush your teeth in the morning, do you have a certain way that you do it?

Of course you do! You wouldn’t rinse your mouth first, then brush your teeth with the toothbrush, then put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, would you? No; you would put the toothpaste on the toothbrush first and then complete the job.

When writing a poem, essay, or story, you also follow a set of steps to do the best job you can do. These steps are called the writing process. The steps include prewriting, writing, revising, editing, and publishing.

Take out a piece of paper and pencil. As you watch The Writing Process by amayfiel (below), take notes about the five steps; you will use them later in the Go! section. Take good notes — write the name of each step in the process and what you will be doing in each step:

The first step in the writing process is called prewriting. The video referred to this step as planning and prewriting, while some people refer to this as brainstorming. This is when you choose what you want to write about. You also jot down details about the topic and make a plan to organize the details. You can use a graphic organizer to help you organize your thoughts; your teacher may provide you with one from time to time to help with this.

The second step in the writing process is called writing. The video referred to this step as composing and drafting. Either way you want to refer to it is fine. During this step, you write your first draft of your assignment. This might be a paragraph, an essay, or a story. You will use the details you organized in Step One to help you complete your assignment.

The third step in the writing process is called revising. This allows you to review your first draft to see if you would like to add more details. You can also remove any sentences that just don’t seem to fit with the story. Also, you want to make sure that what you wrote is clear and easily understood. If not, you need to fix that.

The fourth step in the writing process is called editing. Your job in this section is to check for any mistakes you made in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar.

The last step in the writing process is called publishing. This is the exciting last step! You will write your final copy and then share it with your teacher, your family, or whoever you want to share it with!

This might seem like a lot of work to you, but it really doesn’t take that long at all. It also helps you get your creative juices flowing! We all have times when we get stuck in our writing and are not sure what we want to say next. If you use the writing process, you can go back to your prewriting and review the ideas you had written down. This can help you continue on with your story. Just like brushing your teeth, you will eventually do the steps without thinking, “What comes next?”

What step do you think is the most important step in the writing process? Tell your teacher or parent and explain why you selected it.

Now, continue on to the Got It? section to review the five steps.