O is for ORGANIZING FOR WRITING! Once you or your student is writing two paragraphs or more and starting to understand that a paragraph is a unit of thought, it will be time to move onto even more multi-paragraph writing. Here are some other organizational tips for middle school (or so) level writing: 1. Always determine what the topic of each paragraph will be ahead of time. (This is true for all factual writing--essays, reports, etc.) 2. If you or your student is having trouble writing multiple paragraphs and breaking up material into paragraphs, you can ease into this by doing either of the following: a. Easier: Write about one broad topic that has many little topics in it, such as Four States I Have Visited or Three Best Presidents or Four Favorite Colors or Five Dog Breeds for Companionship. Then it will be a no brainer to divide material--each paragraph will be one of the four or one of the three or one of the five. b. Little Harder: Write about one topic that has very clear and distinct paragraph topics. For example, The State of Florida--then the paragraph topics might be history of the state, state symbol (and bird, flower, etc.), crops, recreation, etc. Or Jack Russell Terriers--with paragraph topics of appearance, history, breeding, personality, etc. 3. Keep a student from being overwhelmed by long writing by assigning shorter paragraphs (and possibly more paragraphs). it is usually easier for a student to come up with four pieces of information for three or four sentences for each topic than it is for students to come up with a lot of info about one topic. 4. Encourage your student (or you!) to plan ahead. Any organizational methods (and we will talk about more over the weekend) will lead to more success in writing.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 00:20:59 +0000
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