Try these tips with the following Merit programs: Essay Punch, Paragraph Punch, and Starter Paragraph Punch

Ask students what kinds of writing they do for social studies, science, and language arts classes. Do they feel like writing? Why or why not? When is writing easy? When is it difficult? What kinds of writing do they most like to read? Least like to read?

Ask students what kinds of writing they do outside school. Do they keep a journal? Write letters or email? Create stories or comic strips?

Have students use a Merit writing program, going through Pre-Writing and inputting sentences for Writing-Body. Ask them to break into pairs in order to share sentences with each other.

Have students continue with their Merit writing program till they reach Editing. Ask them to work in pairs, helping each other as they edit.

Help students transfer their completed writing to their own disks, or to a word-processing, email, or HTML program. Have them publish their work by printing it.

Follow up by asking students to break into small groups and share their printed writing. What do they like about each other's writing? Do group members have any suggestions for each other?

Follow up each session by asking students what they found easiest when using their Merit writing program. What was already familiar to them? What new things did they learn about writing?

Review any problem areas for writing in the classroom. Ask students what they found most difficult about starting or editing their writing.

If students are using Starter Paragraph Punch or Paragraph Punch, give them a short text based on material they are reading. Prompt students to observe that this short text is missing punctuation, such as sentence breaks, capitals, and commas. Have them edit by inserting punctuation.

If students are using Essay Writing or Writing About Reading, give them a short text based on material they are reading for social studies or language arts classes. Prompt students to observe that this short text is either missing paragraph breaks or has paragraphs in the wrong order. Have them edit by inserting paragraph breaks or fixing paragraph order.

Ask students to try doing pre-writing for their language arts or social studies classes.

Have students work in pairs to come up with a list of adjectives to describe people, places, and things. Ask the pairs to come up with a list of verbs to describe action, then a list of adverbs for describing actions.

Request that students try editing their writing for language arts, social studies, and science classes.

Put together a class publication of work done with a Merit process writing program.