Etymology List 4

Writing Workshop Day

On Writing Workshop Days – EVERYONE will be writing, but everyone may not be working on the same thing.  Each English 10 and Honors student currently has a minimum of three different writing assignments that they may be working on:

October Monthly Papers (Academic Writing)

Write the World Prompt- This I Believe (Creative Writing)

College Go Week Essay (Academic Writing)

All of these are assignments and need to be completed by each student. However, each has a far different purpose and the weight of each on your grade is quite different. As you know your monthly paper is a 100 point paper that will always be added into the grade book as a significant part of your Eng. 10 Grade. The Write the World Prompt- This I Believe (Creative Writing) is something that will be weighted less if graded at all, but will be used in future creative writing workshops and possibly shared in class. While the College Go Week Essay is a great opportunity to earn money for college, but will not be graded as a part of you Eng. 10 grade. I never assign anything in class that does not have a purpose and as a member of the class, you should complete all assignments.

I will be able to select only the top three College Go Week essays to further on in the contest. Whether your essay is selected to be sent into the contest or not, this is a fantastic opportunity to reflect on what you want to do in reference to college. It asks you to look at what you are doing now in high school to prepare yourself for your college experience.  I would suggest that you go back over the Habits of Mind we introduced during the first few weeks of school as a part of your prewriting for this reflective assignment.

Our mini lesson today is on Prewriting as the first step in the writing process. There is no one correct way to do prewriting, but it is a very valuable step in the writing process. While at this stage of your education I rarely ask you to provide your prewriting as a part of your graded work, it is normally pretty easy to see who has and hasn’t done the prewriting for the assignment. Some time spent in this stage pays off considerably in the long run.

1. You should use pre-writing to…
   • think more clearly
   • see a start of your paper
   • keep track of your ideas
   • practice expressing yourself in writing

Brainstorming

Clustering or Mindmapping

Freewriting

Listing

Outlining

Looping

The Journalists’ Questions

Question-Asking