Organizing writing before the first sentence is written is a sure way for students to improve their writing. Yet many students (most students?) don’t do it. Why? Some kids are in a hurry and don’t want to take the time to create an organizer. Some kids don’t know how to create useful organizers. Some kids think skipping an organizer won’t harm their writing.
What can teachers do to encourage students to create organizers and to use them?
Teachers could insist students use a prewriting organizer before writing a single sentence, and grade it or include it as part of the writing assignment grade. For a given assignment, the teacher could reproduce several student prewriting organizers (and the teacher’s own prewriting organizer) for the class to analyze. What ones are effective? Why? The teacher could ask students to compare those to their own organizers. Then the teacher could ask students to improve their organizers before they write their essays.
Teachers could insist that students follow their organizers, and grade the essay, in part, on whether the organizer was followed. Teachers could ask students to exchange organizers and essays before they are turned in for grades. Classmates could alert students who have not followed the organizer. Teachers could give those students more time to align their essays with their organizers.
Teachers could limit the kinds of organizers students use to
- Either mindwebs or semiformal organizers for most informational and persuasive essays,
- Either Venn diagrams or charts for comparison or contrasting information, or
- Modified time lines for narratives.
Teachers could spend more time teaching how to use organizers without requiring the resulting essays. Not every organizer needs to lead to an essay.
Teachers could provide exercises using poor organizers for students to analyze. Students would need to identify why those organizers are poor and how they could be improved.
English Writing Teacher 