Technology makes it easier than ever for students to work through the writing process and to know what they need to do and how to stay organized along the way.

Here are some tips for supporting students through the writing process:

Start Out On The “Write” Foot

Many students need support before you even hand out a writing assignment. You need to set the groundwork.

To make sure students know what to do with a writing assignment, you can frontload the assignment with instruction on how to dissect a task and get started with writing.

You might want to start by showing your students the following video, “Breaking Down an Argumentative Writing Task,” from the EasyBib vault.  It gives students prewriting strategies like identifying audience, brainstorming, and starting with a hypothesis.

Breaking Down Tasks

After students complete the lesson, you can use the analytics to quickly see who needs more help and who is ready to start writing!

Tip: Even if you’ve already completed a number of writing projects in your class, it’s always good to review best practices with your students.

Set the Assignment

As students build out their skills, they can start applying what they’ve learned about the writing process to a writing assignment.

Students should be writing for many different purposes and at different times of the year. But, if you need some inspiration for authentic writing tasks, here are a few assignments you can start with:

Get Informed! Presidential Candidate Profiles

This year, we will elect a new president. During election season, there is a lot of information flying around about each candidate. It can be hard to know what’s true, what’s being exaggerated, and what is a flat out lie. To help your classmates stay informed, you will write a well-researched profile of one presidential candidate and his or views.

For your profile, you will need to pick one candidate, provide some biographic information and explain the candidate’s views on taxes, education, and foreign policy.

Your profile should be supported by at least three credible sources.

Letter to the editor: What’s your cause?

Identify a community issue that is important to you. This could be a law you disagree with, a law that you think should be established, a neighborhood park that needs attention, an issue in schools – anything that affects the members of your community.

Begin gathering sources from databases and websites that help you learn more about the cause you chose. Make sure your are using relevant, authoritative sources.

Write a letter to the editor explaining what the issue is and what steps community members should take to address the issue. Use the examples you studied from your local “Opinions” section to help you structure your writing.

Should America Have a Holiday Dedicated to Christopher Columbus?

Your task is to write an Argumentative Essay with your position clearly defined as to why or why not America should have a holiday dedicated to Christopher Columbus.

Your position should be clearly stated and should have evidence to support your position.

Here are a few resources to help you get started:

• Indigenous Peoples Day
• How Columbus Day Fell Victim to Its Own Success
• Columbus Controversy
• Columbus’ Journals

Give Students the Tools They Need

Now that you’ve set the assignment, you need to give students the tools they need to be able to write their papers. What you don’t want is to get a paper that is one long stream-of-consciousness essay, or only cites Wikipedia articles as evidence.

So, how can you help them?

Provide Feedback at Every Step

Brief conferences or “check-ins” throughout the writing process helps students stay on track. Ask questions while reading writing pieces with students, help them reflect, discuss ways to improve it, and guide them to making effective changes and edits.

Having difficulty finding time to check in with every single one of your students? Peer-editing is a great way for students to share their work with classmates. Model what peer-editing should look like and include a checklist to help students stay focused and on-task while conferencing with their peers.

We love the examples of how to give effective feedback in this Edutopia article by Marianne Stenger.

Share Examples of Exemplary Work

Of course we do not want our students to copy others’ work, but sharing a few high-quality examples provides students with good “role-models” to follow. Notice that students are having difficulty with transitions? Show them a writing piece where the transitions are smooth and well-organized. Are students relying too much on Wikipedia? Showcase an example of a writing piece that pulls in information from many different types of authoritative sources. Showcasing high-quality examples, and having a discussion on what makes particular pieces stellar, will make students conscious of what their work should include.

Show that Rubrics Rock!

Create a rubric to help keep students on-track with their writing. Make it simple enough for students to understand and encourage them to use it – not only at the end of their assignment, but while writing it too. Add check off boxes next to the rubric components to help them self-assess their work and address areas that should be revised.

With the tips above, your students will dive more confidently into their writing assignments and you can excitedly plan for your next writing assignment.

The post A Guide to Helping Your Students Through the Writing Process appeared first on EasyBib Blog.

The way students organize their notes can have a direct impact on the quality of their finished work, so it’s important for them to learn how to do this effectively. As students are interacting with the text, they should be taking notes, and mentally categorizing the information as they read.  

The organization students choose should reflect the purpose of the finished work. For example, if students are retelling a specific event in history, a sequential organization makes sense. If the purpose of the assignment is to persuade, they should consider a structure that places the most important information first. This takes practice, but it’s an important skill to master.

Fortunately there are some exercises and strategies you can try to help your students learn how to organize their thoughts effectively:

1. Assign an article along with a corresponding word prompt.  Have students read the article carefully, take notes, and organize their their thoughts in a way that will help them respond to the writing prompt. As a class or in small groups, have students explain their organizational choices.

2. Encourage students to organize their notes by via a visual representation of their chosen categories. One example of this is color coding, which can be done with many note taking tools. Another idea is to use graphic organizers as seen in the video below.

Graphic Organizers

3. Have students organize their notecards using criteria they select, and then partner with another student. As each reviews the other’s organization, they can offer suggestions for making the flow clearer and more understandable. Here’s a video from our resource center to get them started:

Organizing into Categories

4. Students can orally present their organized notes, and critique each other’s choices.  

Once students are comfortable organizing their thoughts in a way that makes sense to them, they can tackle any assignment that comes their way!

The post Helping Students Organize Their Thoughts Before They Write appeared first on EasyBib Blog.

In some cases they suffer from “stage fright,” and are nervous about speaking in front of their peers.  Others have a tough time finding topics, organizing their thoughts, and presenting them coherently, while simultaneously engaging their audience.  

Having students conduct research and then prepare presentations around issues that matter to them can help alleviate some of these challenges.

With this in mind, we present the assignment “Introduce an Issue: Informational Paragraph and Speech/Presentation” where students share issues that matter to them in the upcoming presidential election. It’s informative, timely, and good research and speaking practice!

The original assignment (linked here) was created by the Los Altos High School English Department and modified by Margaret Bennett and Elizabeth Tompkins for their 10th grade World Literature honors class. Margaret told us she loves this assignment, and gave us a number of reasons to explain why she thinks it’s so effective:

• It establishes a strong process by getting kids to ask questions and form essential questions, and mirrors the senior project her students will have to complete when they reach the 12th grade
• students become really skilled at doing research, including using databases and assessing bias and credibility
• there is a lot of student ownership as each student chooses his/her own issue to research

Although this assignment was designed for students in the 10th grade, you can easily modify it to address any students’ current level and interests.

Click here to download the Word Doc version

Introduce an Issue: 

Informational Paragraph and Speech/Presentation

Assignment:

Research an issue (an important topic or problem for debate or discussion) of interest to you in this year’s election and introduce it to your peers in a concise 3-4 minute informative speech.

Points:

This is a major assignment worth 80 points (60 points written speech, 20 points oral presentation).

Process:

When creating your speech, please follow the process below.

1. Topic – Clearly state the topic you are researching (Ex. Renewable Energy).

Find a current topic that satisfies these questions:

My topic is ______________________________

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it a real issue, with genuine significance? ____________________
• Are you personally interested in this issue? ____________________
• Is the issue narrow enough to be manageable? ________________

2. Develop a List of Questions – Add depth to your issue by asking probing questions (minimum of 5+ questions).

3. Preliminary Research/Starting the Annotated Bibliography – Look for answers to your questions. Compile at least three articles reflecting multiple views on the issue which expand your understanding as to the depth and complexity of the topic.

4. Isolate the Issue/Building a Knowledge Base – Narrow your topic to a specific issue – clearly state the issue that needs attention. (Ex.: Renewable Energy in the US in the next 10 years)

My narrowed topic is ________________________________________

5. Essential Question – A paper’s essential question is “What question will your speech try to answer?” In this case, you are telling us why your narrowed topic should be an issue we care about in the election.

My essential question is: Why is ___<narrowed topic>  an important issue in this year’s election?

6. Further Research & Supporting Points – Now that you have your focused, essential question, go back to searching for the best four credible sources, reflecting multiple perspectives, to expand your understanding.

Choose three points that support your question and help convince us that your topic is an important issue in this year’s elections.

This is an important issue we should care about because:

• First Point: ________________________________________________
• Second Point: ______________________________________________
• Third Point: _______________________________________________

7. Annotated Bibliography – Create an Annotated Bibliography in MLA format. Your annotations should note the important features of each article and how you used the article.

8. Write your Informative Speech – Outline your speech (scroll down to the bottom of this doc). Then, use your outline to write a short, informative speech (approximately 300 words) in which you synthesize multiple sources about your subject in order to inform your audience.

Assert a clear thesis that organizes your complex ideas. Use your three supporting points and specific evidence from at least three sources to clearly, accurately, concisely and logically help your audience (fellow students) follow your line of reasoning and communicate the significance of the issue. Be sure to credit your sources in your speech when you reference a work or incorporate it as evidence.

Remember, your goal is to inform your listeners of an important issue without taking a position. Your speech should genuinely teach your audience about your topic, but should not include your opinion on the topic.

Be sure to create a strong title.

This speech should be about 1 page, double spaced. Be concise. Every word matters. See the models provided.

While there are many ways to organize a speech, we recommend you follow this format:

Introduction (about 2 sentences):

• Hook your readers with a general introduction to your topic & focused issue.
• Tell us the scope and significance of the issue you will be teaching us about!

The Extent /Reason to Listen (1-2 sentences):

• Reveal your knowledge of the history/general background surrounding your issue as well as why your listeners should be interested in this topic. Assert why this is a significant topic (may have already done so in introduction).

Main Point 1 (about 2-3 sentences):

• Give clear statement of first point.
• Provide supporting evidence (possibly paraphrased).
• Include citation of evidence & explanation/commentary

Transition to next point…..

Main Point 2 (about 2-3 sentences):

• Give clear statement of second point.
• Provide supporting evidence (possibly paraphrased).
• Include citation of evidence & explanation/commentary

Transition to next point…

Main Point 3 (about 2-3 sentences):

• Give clear statement of third point.
• Provide supporting evidence (possibly paraphrased).
• Include citation of evidence & explanation/commentary

Conclusion (1-2 sentences):

• Reassert main idea that we should take-away from your speech. What is the main idea we should have learned about from this?

You may choose to organize your ideas into one larger paragraph or several smaller ones.

Peer review:

Rehearse – Practice your speech paying attention to delivery, including eye contact, volume and pronunciation. You may use note cards. Consider making strategic use of digital media to enhance your audience’s understanding of your findings and to add interest.

Final Products:

Final speech (oral and written). 80 points major: 60 points written, 20 points oral

Due the day after your speech:

• REFLECTION on the process (typed and printed hard copy due the day after you give your speech – please also put in your “shared with teacher” folder).

View the rubric for this assignment here.

The post Informational Speeches on Issues that Matter appeared first on EasyBib Blog.