Search Prewriting Educational Resources

Before your student can write, they’ve got to prewrite. ‘Prewriting’ is just a fancy word for ‘drafting,’ and we have tons of ways for them to practice it: Activities to get them started, games to make it fun, and worksheets for putting pencil to paper. Get your kid all kinds of prewriting help with our expert-selected materials, designed to make your student a writing whiz.

As students begin to expand their writings into more mature pieces and substantive pieces like informational or functional writing, it will get harder to be able to maintain the a constant flow and hit all the points they are aiming to get across. Teaching them prewriting and planning techniques will help them to accomplish this.
Prewriting and planning is the process of getting all of the ideas your students want to convey in a piece organized so that they will be able to stay on topic as they write. There are many different prewriting techniques.

• Brainstorming - As the name implies, brainstorming is not an overly organized process, instead letting the student simply write what comes to mind when thinking about the topic. These ideas are then reviewed and the good ideas are noted for use in the paper.
• Clustering - Clustering is a more visual and organised that brainstorming. The main concept of the piece is written in the center of the page. Subsequent ideas are written around the main topic with lines connecting them. Each subsequent idea can then branch of and have it’s own subpoints.
• Outlining - The most organized form of prewriting, an outline is often made after one of the other prewriting methods has been completed. The outline actually creates the structure of the paper, laying out how the points will be addressed and in what order. This will typically be the last prewriting step before a rough draft is started.

Working with students using the resources provided above by Education.com may help students gain familiarity and comfort in using these techniques.