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.
