Our Writing Process

We have been working during the first couple months of school, to learn the writing process.  We have practiced each step along the way and produced our first story this week.  We now know that a good story...

...starts with an idea...

Then it's a good idea to practice your story out loud to a friend (or to yourself).

Drawing a quick sketch of what happens at the beginning, middle and end of the story helps us organize our thoughts.  Rehearsing these steps with a partner makes sure we didn't leave out any details.

Now we start drafting our story.  This draft will be really rough, so we leave  blank lines to give us room for changes later.

After reading our first draft over with a friend, we make suggestions for each other.  We might point out some missing details, or ask for clarification about a part. We might compliment the plot, but suggest some adjectives to help make the characters appear in my head, too. Then it's back to make changes, additions and sometimes even to take parts out.

Along the way, if we get stuck on how to spell a word, we do our best to sound it out first.  We even take the time to fish hook the word to make sure it says what we want it to say (we don't want to write "supper" when we mean to write "super"!) Then we ask three friends to confirm or correct our spelling.  When we have it correct, we add it to our personal dictionaries so we know how to spell it the next time!

After a few revisions and lots of work with a friend or two, we are ready to make a very neat, very perfect final copy!  We don't skip lines anymore and we use our very best handwriting for this copy!  Sometimes we might even type our stories into the computer to share!

We take time to make a detailed illustration to go along with our story as a picture or as the cover to our book.  Then we put it all together for publication to share with others!