The Twelve Writing Strategies

Over the past few weeks, we have been dealing with tips, tricks and traits of writing. This week we will be looking at twelve strategies to help develop strategic writers. Twelve might seem like a lot but at the end of the day they all play an important role in ensuring that we become and help students to become strategic writers. 

Remember the stages of the writing process... Keep them in mind as we navigate this week's blog together. 

Strategy One: Setting Goals 

Writers set action oriented goals to guide their writing. These goals provide guidance and direction for the entire writing piece. 

Strategy Two: Generating

Writers collect information that is necessary for the writing piece by using their background knowledge, research data or other sources. 

Generating can be used during the brainstorming stage of the writing process.

Strategy Three: Organizing 

Writers place ideas into groups and sequences as they practice for their pieces. During this stage, graphic organizers can be used to help guide the process. 

Although it can be used as a pre-writing strategy, organizing may also be used in the drafting and revising stages of the writing process. 

Strategy Four: Elaborating

Writers expand their ideas by adding vivid details. Sometimes the additional words and ideas are gathered through brainstorming; other times, research must be done in order for students to expand their ideas. 

Elaborating is mostly used during the drafting stage and revising stage of the piece. 

Strategy Five: Evaluating

Writers review and evaluate their pieces and decide how well the goals of the assignment were met. While going through the entire writing process it is important that students review their piece to ensure that it matches the intended purpose. 

Evaluating can be used during the revising stage of the writing process.

Strategy Six: Narrowing

Writers restrict their topics to ensure that their piece is specific and manageable. In doing so, the piece may answer the 5 W's - Who, What, Where, When and How. 

Narrowing can be used during the revising stage of the writing process.

Strategy Seven: Revising 

Writers add or delete words or phrases, make substitutions and change things around in order to communicate their ideas effectively. 

Revising can be used during the revising stage of the writing process. 

Strategy Eight: Questioning  

This strategy is self explanatory. Here is where writers ask themselves questions in order to develop their pieces. It is important that students ask questions in order to play an active role in the writing process. 

Strategy Nine: Proofreading 

Writers carefully read through their piece in search of spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammatical errors. 

Proofreading is a vital part of the editing stage in the writing process. 

Strategy Ten: Monitoring

Writers observe their progress, detect problems and quickly make adjustments in an effort to resolve the problems. 

Monitoring can be used during the editing and conferencing stage of the writing process

Strategy Eleven: Rereading

Writers review their work to ensure that the ideas flow smoothly and to determine whether or not their goals would have been met. The focus here is on the meaning not the mechanics of the piece. 

Rereading can be used during the conferencing stage of the writing process. 

Strategy Twelve: Formatting

Writers design the layout of the final piece and ensure that the writing is legible and that their illustrations add to the piece. Student become aware of the importance of formatting and get ideas on how information is to be presented when they read and study books that have been through the formatting process. 

Formatting is used during the publishing stage of the writing process.

Whew! We covered a lot of content in this week's blog. I hope that you gathered something from it. Writing is very important in our classrooms and we should ensure that our students are well equipped to tackle their writing assignments. 

See you next week! 

- Onida Tyrell