The Writing Process

My CT did an amazing exercise today for our students to better understand the writing process. The point of the exercise was to show students how writers are just like sculptors. At the beginning of class, each student was given a small container of clay. After they had their clay the teacher gave these directions and made the following analogies. I paraphrased the directions from the website http://forums.atozteacherstuff.com/showthread.php?t=62544:

1. Close your eyes and knead the clay and get a feel for the clay--A writer must know the material before he or she begins to write. Words are the materials of writers which can be found in dictionaries, thesauruses, and books.

2. Play with the clay. Bend it, stretch it, pile it, press it. Don't make anything out of it. Just play--Writers need to play with words by writing in journals or writing notes.

3. Today you will create something. You will put it on display for your peers to see. It is important for writers to know who their audience will be, because it can affect what they create.

4. You cannot create something unless you know what the purpose is, just like writers need to know why they are writing. Today you will make a pencil holder--something that will hold a pencil on your desk.

5. Create the first of many ideas you will come up with for the pencil holder. Don't decide on the final idea yet. Instead, experiment with your ideas, just like a writer experiments with how he or she may want to say something.

6. OK, mush up your dough and create another pencil holder. There are thousands of ideas where that one came from.

7. Now mush that idea up and start again. Try something new and different from your last design.

8. OK, now mush it up again. Now we need to come up with a way to evaluate your pencil holder. (Have students come up with a rubric).

9. Create your final draft keeping the criteria in the rubric in mind.

10. Look at your final creation from different views. Look at it from the top, the side, the bottom. What revisions can you make to make your creation even better? Just as you need to look at your sculpture from a new perspective, a writer needs to look at his or her writing from a different perspective: read aloud the paper or ask a peer to read the paper.

This exercise is a great analogy for the writing process, and the students really enjoyed it.