Encourage skillful writing by giving children extreme freedom to write very messy early drafts and reinforcing the skills they need to create perfect final drafts.
Building strong writing habits in kids early on is very important, as their writing skills will have a serious effect on their education and career options. This five-step writing process is simple enough for children to implement, but matches the basic process followed by any skillful writer regardless of age, setting or purpose.
Planning
The first step of any significant writing project is planning out the content, scope and flow of the argument or story. In this step, the writer may use outlining, mind mapping, brainstorming or conversation to create a high-level summary of the piece. As he plans, he can discover and carry out whatever research is necessary and adjust the structure as necessary. This early systematic practice, though it may seem tedious at first, will create habits over time that can develop children into writers with a strong instinct for structure, pacing and scope.
Rough Draft
The rough draft is an opportunity to write with speed, passion and a complete disregard for quality. Writing can be an intimidating process, and giving children real freedom to put their thoughts down as messily as necessary will be a great gift to their future writing experiences. The main requirement for the rough draft is completeness. Make sure the writer knows to include every thought she wrote in her plan in some form. There will be time to fill out or cut away later.
Edit for Content
On the first pass, the writer should edit his rough draft for content, style and structure. The best way to do this is to re-read it himself and also share it with teachers, parents or peers for suggestions. Suggested improvements can include points that need more clarity, sentences that are irrelevant, wordiness, confusing use of language or incomplete or poorly structured arguments. This edit should stay limited to conceptual fixes; if the child rewrites a paragraph, grammatical errors in the original paragraph will become irrelevant.
Edit for Grammar
The second pass of editing should focus on fixing errors in grammar and spelling, as well as word choice and sentence-level ambiguities in style. After the first edit, the basic structure and scope of the piece should be sound. The writer should practice proofreading her own writing, as well as sharing it with parents, teachers or peers to get the benefit of a fresh eye. Another useful skill to practice in both stages of editing is to accept correction as a helpful favor, not as criticism.
Publish
After thorough editing and proofreading, the piece of writing is ready for a final draft and publication. The writer should create a clean final draft using his best penmanship or a word processing program, integrating all of the corrections refined during the editing phases. Once the final draft is finished, the writer can turn it in or help publish it in accordance with the guidelines and context defined by the nature of the writing project.
Tags: final draft, writer should, giving children, rough draft, writing project