Teaching Writing
Some ideas and new resources in our Lesson Library for teaching writing and using for writing activities.
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We have many writing focused activites and materials in our lesson library. Many for whatever approach you take when teaching writing. Find at the end of this article about teaching approaches - a list of some of our more recent and recommended materials for teaching writing.
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Teachers take very different approaches to teaching writing. These approaches range from free to very controlled practice. Each has their strength and weakness. Let's look at 5 of the most popular approaches teachers take when teaching students writing.
The Process Approach.
This is probably the most used approach because it has very straight forward steps. Students go through different stages in a writing process before coming up with a final draft. The activity of creating and writing is the focus not the final product. When writing a story or an essay, many teachers will choose this method. First, students brainstorm ideas and information related to the topic. After that, a first draft is made. Then there are steps where students get feedback, revise and then re-draft. Finally, a final draft is written and published.
The Genre Based Approach.
Students focus on mastering the language, conventions, organization and style of popular types or genres of writing. Writing in this approach is seen as contextual, for a particular purpose. This could be writing a play, writing a brochure, writing an email or a structured essay etc … Each genre comes with own particular format and conventions. This article outlines this approach well.
Free Writing
Also known as the language experience approach, students write about what they are interested in. The student’s own language and grammar is used as the basis to create reading and writing materials. Often associated with this approach is the writing prompt. Students are given a prompt or question to trigger their own thoughts and the writing follows. You can even just put on music and have students write how they feel! Automatic writing.
The Power Writing Approach
A very structured method based on main ideas with supporting details. Steps are given numerical values to help students organize their writing. First students write a topic sentence or thesis. Then, supporting ideas. After that, details and examples elaborate the piece of writing. Finally, personalization and voice is the focus.
The Product Oriented Approach.
This approach is the flip-side to the process approach. Here, the focus is on the final product and not the steps or stages to achieve the final published version. First, the teacher presents a model text and it is studied and analyzed. Next, students mimic the model text through guided or controlled writing, in order to produce a final product that is like the original. We might see ChatGPT and its use in writing as a kind of product-oriented writing approach.
Guided or Controlled Writing
This is a sub-set of the product-oriented approach. Students don’t produce any final piece of writing but write with the assistance of models in the form of sentences, icons, pictures, explicit structures. Many teachers design exercises using this approach and it is usually used as a way for teachers to support beginning writers. For example, student might write sentences using “when” clauses based on an example.
Which approach do you prefer? Why would you use it in your teaching? Let us know with a comment!
Recommended Recent Resources
See our online Writing Prompts, free for all teachers to use in class. Part of our full prompt generator. Plus check out our “prompt” tag for many materials using this approach.
Tell The Story. A guided approach is taken and student use the images to connect them and tell a story.
Compare and Contrast Photos. Students write to explain the differences between the photos.
See our Teaching Writing post, full of recommended activities for teaching writing.
Persuasive Speech / Essay writing. A collection of materials for preparing, writing a speech. Also, see many organizers for writing essays, in our Lesson Library. Here is one example.