Making the Writing Process Concrete!

If you teach writing and you haven’t read the ‘6 + 1 Traits of Writing’ do yourself a favour and get reading! This concept gives teachers, students and parents a platform and universal language to talk about writing. It helps to break writing down into parts and gives a success criteria to creating an amazing writing piece EVERY TIME!

Beginning the year with making the writing process concrete is crucial and this activity is such a fun way to do just that!

Today we explored the stages of the writing process through PLAY DOH! This lesson is inspired from the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing - my bible for teaching writing!

The children were asked to ‘create something’ with the play doh. As the children brainstormed their ideas and how they were going to create their work piece we connected this with the PLANNING stage!

Next, the children began creating their piece with just one colour. Just like writing your first rough DRAFT with greyed pencil. It’s not pretty or perfect…YET!

Then, the children were invited to think about REVISING their work! Think: ’READ’ Rearrange, Exchange, Add and Delete! They swapped colours, added more detail, took away parts they didn’t like.

After that, it was time to polish off our creations! Get rid of any unwanted pieces and clean our work spaces. This is the EDITING stage!

Before the final stage, the children gave feedback to each other as well as myself. This is the CONFERENCING stage. Any last minute changes (based on the feedback) were made. 

Finally, it was time to PUBLISH! The children came up with a title for their creation and a sentence or words to describe their final piece. They had so much fun!

To demonstrate what they had learnt about the writing process through their play doh creation, the children completed a sequencing activity (created by myself) to show the correct stages of the writing process and write a few words about what happens during this stage. 

I have posters up on the wall in my classroom (shown in this blog) which are used by the students to signal which stage they are up to in the writing process. 

Now that we understand the stages, we are now ready to become real authors and go through the writing process to create our first written piece in Grade Two!