The Writing Process: An Overview Unit keyed to Virginia SOLs and Common Core

The Writing Process: An Overview

Introduction
Every year, or twice a year on block schedule, students across the United States are marched into a central area in schools and given a test covering their writing— their understanding of the writing process and its application to a variety of writing projects, their ability to find and correct errors, and their ability to write an argumentative essay in response to a prompt. The following unit is just an introduction—a way to introduce students to the process that they will be applying to essays. As an introductory unit, I outline the writing process as described by Janet Emig and amended by other researchers. This overview begins their examination of their own writing processes. The process described in this unit also includes a sixth stage added to the original five stages—reflecting—that is meant to help students learn from each writing project and discern how a specific writing project can help them in future writing projects. Through my experiences teaching middle school, high school, and college, I have refined this overview to fit the academic writing required for all three levels. It is important to follow this overview with a writing project that makes them follow the process step by step—all stages in a single project—so that they will begin to see how the process works in general. As they work on more projects, they will begin to understand their own approach to writing, uncovering their own process as they work. In my high school classes, we proceed through additional units (“Standard Essay Structure,” “Writing a Narrative Essay,” “Writing an Argumentative Essay in Response to a Prompt,” and “Writing an Argumentative Essay based on Research from ProCon.org,”) so that the students will work through each of the stages of the process in a variety of ways. As they work through the creation of essays for these units, the students will begin to understand their own approach to writing, uncovering their own process as they work.
In addition to the “The Writing Process: An Overview,” I have included a group of daily sentence practice activities that work with specific editing concerns as well as reinforcing some material from the notes.

Rationale
This mini-unit is meant to introduce students to the myriad processes that good writers follow as they write. For some students, this will give them the vocabulary to describe what they have always done as they wrote. For others, this will introduce them to new processes that they can adapt to their writing as they progress through the stages of creating a piece of writing. This is just an introduction to the ideas behind the writing process approach to writing; it is not all inclusive and must be followed by a writing project that has activities to have students practice each stage of the process.


Unit Goals for “The Writing Process: An Overview”
Common Core Standards

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.5
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.5
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience

Virginia Standards of Learning

11.6 The student will write in a variety of forms, with an emphasis on persuasion.
a. Generate, gather, plan, and organize ideas for writing to address a specific audience and purpose.
c. Organize ideas in a sustained and logical manner.
e. Adapt content, vocabulary, voice, and tone to audience, purpose, and situation.
f. Revise writing for clarity of content, accuracy and depth of information.

11.7 The student will self- and peer-edit writing for correct grammar, capitalization,
punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, and paragraphing.
e. Adjust sentence and paragraph structures for a variety of purposes and audiences.
f. Proofread and edit writing for intended audience and purpose.

Additional Goals—to be started in this unit and carried through the next writing units

Students will go through the writing process in a compressed time in an attempt to mirror the conditions of a standardized test.

Students will know how to plan an essay using prewriting strategies.

Students will understand revision in five areas: ideas and development, organization, word choice, voice, and sentence fluency.

Students will know how to track their errors