Did your students follow the other writer’s workshop lessons to organize a narrative essay? If so, students’ graphic organizers are completed and it is time to write! Woo woo! This lesson will share teaching tips for writing rough drafts. It is STEP 2 of the writing process. These ideas are part of a scaffolding approach to writing with a series of lessons ideal for any writing curriculum.
1. TEACH
Start off the lesson by introducing all the rough draft tips below.
- Create a specific goal for your writing.
- Just write.
- Keep your audience in mind while writing. For example, you would write in a different voice to your friends than you would for an adult.
- Don’t worry about misspelled words.
- Indent each paragraph.
- Skip lines so that you can make changes during the revising step.
2. MODEL
Model writing a rough draft and purposely make mistakes so students see that it doesn’t matter for this stage. It is more important to get idea down and keep them flowing. Often times when students stop to make changes while they are writing, they lose their train of thought. I love when students want to correct me right away when I purposely make a mistake. I laugh and say, “It is my rough draft! It is important that I just write and not think about the mechanics! Let me write! I don’t want to lose my focus.”
3. TAKE NOTES
Have students take notes in their notebook to remind themselves how to write a rough draft in the future.
4. APPLY
Now it is the students’ turn to write. Let your students write around the room. Getting them comfortable will ease their fears of writing.
5. SHARE
Sharing their rough draft writing is valuable. Students will be able to hear their writing to see if it flows naturally. It will give them ideas for the revising stage.
I hope this helps you with your writing lessons!
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LAST LESSON: WRITING MINI LESSON #21- WRITING A CONCLUSION
NEXT LESSON: WRITING MINI LESSON #23- REVISING A NARRATIVE ESSAY!
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL LIST OF WRITING MINI LESSONS
This lesson is also included in the STEP-BY-STEP WRITING® Programwith mini-lessons designed to scaffold through the writing process. Writing units included are sentence structure, paragraph writing, narrative writing, opinion writing, and informative writing. See what is included in the image below and click on it to learn more about them! You will turn your reluctant writers into ROCKSTAR WRITERS™!
“I can’t say enough about how great this resource is. We’ve finished the first unit, and I followed each lesson as written out! The grade three and four aligned, but had different lessons, so I looked like a superstar teacher in the first paragraph writing month. Best thing bought from TpT! Would recommend wholeheartedly from a veteran 22 year teacher!” – Diana
