PREWRITING
The prewriting phase is the first step when writing. It is when you think of all of your ideas and then organize them into a plan.
Brainstorming:
Brainstorming is when you put all of your ideas down on paper, without choosing which ones you will use. You put down as much information as you can. We often use different types of graphic organizers to help us such as Venn Diagrams, clusters, sequence charts and more. It can also involve making lists. |
Choosing A Topic:
After you finish brainstorming, you need to choose your topic. Sometimes you will be given your topic ahead of time and sometimes you need to decide for yourself. When choosing a topic, it is important to make sure you have enough information to complete your task. If not, you will need to do some research. |
Main Ideas and Details:
Once you have chosen your topic, you need to figure out what main ideas you are going to write about. For grade 4, you should choose between 2 and 3 main ideas, depending on the assignment. Then, it is important to figure out the supporting details for each main idea. Again, you should have a minimum of 3 supporting details. Supporting details tell us more information about the main idea to support it. |
Research:
It is important that you have real facts to support your topic and main ideas. When doing research, we need to stay focused on the purpose of our writing. This is where you fill in any details you are missing.
It is important that you have real facts to support your topic and main ideas. When doing research, we need to stay focused on the purpose of our writing. This is where you fill in any details you are missing.
Outline:
Once you have decided on your topic and researched and found all of your information, you need to make a plan which we call an outline. This indicates what each paragraph will be about and what details will be included.
Once you have decided on your topic and researched and found all of your information, you need to make a plan which we call an outline. This indicates what each paragraph will be about and what details will be included.