Lecture Notes on Writing Process and Writing Traits

Flashcards to review lecture notes on the writing process, writing traits, and related concepts.

Writing Process

The steps writers go through to produce completed writing, including: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

Prewriting

The planning stage of the writing process involving activities like discussion, webbing, listing, drawing, writing, and outlining.

Drafting

The initial composition with all the ideas written down in an organized way.

Revising

Reviewing, modifying, and reorganizing the writing to improve the draft.

Editing

Proofreading and correcting writing conventions after revising.

Publishing

Sharing the completed writing with an audience in various ways.

Writing to learn

Short, informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas.

Writing Traits

Vocabulary used to teach, discuss, assess, and give feedback on writing.

Ideas and content

The main message and content of the writing.

Organization

The internal structure of a piece of writing.

Voice

The mood and tone implied in the writing; the author's perspective.

Word choice

Use of rich, colorful, precise language in the writing.

Sentence fluency

The rhythm and flow of the writing, including sentence length and variety.

Conventions

The mechanical correctness of the writing, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, and paragraphing.

Presentation

The visual and textual elements of the completed writing, including visuals, graphics, etc.

Phonemic Awareness

The conscious awareness that words are made up of segments of our speech that are represented with letters in an alphabetic orthography

Phonological Awareness

Metalinguistic awareness of all levels of the speech sound system, including word boundaries, stress patterns, syllables, onset-rime units, and phonemes

Portfolio Assessment

A form of assessment that presents a body of work that showcases competencies, exemplary work, or the learner's developmental progress.

Precise Language

Using specific words to evoke the intended understanding and/or emotion

Purpose

The reason for the writing, which may include consideration of the audience

Research-based instruction

Founded on an accumulation of facts that have been established in research.

Rubrics

A document that articulates the criteria, or what is being evaluated, and may describe levels of quality from excellent to poor.

Scaffolding

An educational strategy in which the teacher utilizes logical selection and sequencing of content to model and guide students' learning, including breaking content down into manageable instructional units, and then gradually decreasing support to increase independence

Self-Efficacy

refers to the students' beliefs and attitudes toward their capabilities to achieve academic success, as well as belief in their ability to fulfill academic tasks and the successful learning of the materials.

Sentence construction

Building sentence level skills using fragments, scrambled sentences, and run-ons to teach students about sentences

Sentence expansion

Addition of details explaining who, what, where, when, and/or how to a sentence kernel

Sentence frames or stems

A method of scaffolding that teachers can use with students to support writing at all levels. This includes giving them part of the words in the sentence with blanks where they can add their own words.

Simple View of Writing

A theoretical framework that states: "writing is a product of two necessary skills, transcription and ideation (also called text generation)"

Speaking process

The process of presenting our ideas for others to hear and understand. This includes the ideas, words, focus, intonation, body language, and speaking vocabulary.

Handwriting

The method of using pencil/pen and paper to produce written products.

High-Frequency Words

Words that are frequently used in the English language. High-frequency words may or may not be phonetically decodable.

Informational/Expository

The text type which includes writing informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

Keyboarding

The act of typing information into a digital device/computer.

Listening process

The process of making meaning from what we hear. This includes listening vocabulary, background knowledge, and attention.

Mechanics

The conventions/rules and technical aspects of writing, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations

Mentor texts

High-quality texts that can be used to model effective writing traits, characteristics, techniques, and/or processes. These can be published texts, teacher-written texts, or student-written texts.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of a word that carries meaning.

Motivation

Refers to a student's attitude toward learning curricular disciplines, including writing. A student who is motivated actively engages in the tasks and activities

Multimodal

Using more than one mode of instruction in a lesson, e.g., linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial.

Multisensory

Referring to any learning activity that includes using two or more sensory modalities simultaneously for taking in or expressing information

Narrative

The text type which includes developing real or imagined experiences or events, incorporating story grammar, through use of effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Opinion/Argumentative

The text which type includes writing to persuade the audience to believe or do something.

Orthography

The writing system of a language specifically the correct sequence of letters, characters, and symbols

Persuasive writing

Intends to convince readers to believe in an idea or opinion and inspires action.

Phoneme

A speech sound that combines with others in a language system to make words

Cumulative teaching

Each step is based on concepts previously learned

Developmental spelling

Children progress through stages of spelling development. Teachers use this knowledge to teach spelling patterns using a systematic approach.

Developmental writing

Young children typically progress through a series of stages as they are learning to write including scribbling/drawing, letter-like forms, letters, spaces, developmental spelling, and conventional writing.

Diagnostic tool

Assessments used to pinpoint specific areas of weakness; provide in-depth information to clarify students' skills and instructional needs

Differentiated instruction

Instruction in which the teacher plans and teaches concepts in a manner so that all students of all differing levels can be successful learners

Dysgraphia

The condition of impaired letter writing by hand, that is, disabled handwriting. Impaired handwriting can interfere with learning to spell words in writing and speed of writing text

Executive function

The mental processes that allow individuals to regulate their thinking and behaviors

Explicit instruction

A structured and systematic method of teaching with emphasis on direct instruction, proceeding in small steps, providing scaffolds to guide students through the learning process, checking for understanding, and supporting practice with feedback until mastery is achieved by all students

Evidence-based practices

which include activities, strategies, and interventions-that are derived from or informed by objective evidence-most commonly, educational research or metrics of school, teacher, and student performance

Formative assessment

Monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback by teachers to inform their teaching and students to improve their learning.

Foundational writing skills

Includes phonological awareness, handwriting or writing production, spelling, basic use of conventions, basic syntax, and writing fluency.

Genre

Literary works of prose, poetry, drama, hybrid forms, or other literature that are distinguished by shared literary conventions.

Gradual release of responsibility

Instructional techniques used to move students toward stronger understanding and independence in the learning process.

Grapheme

A letter or letter combination that spells a single phoneme; in English, a grapheme may be one, two, three, or four letters such as e, ei, igh, or eigh

Graphic organizer

Visual displays of information to help a student organize and compose written material

Strategies instruction

Teachers provide direct, explicit instruction in strategies and typically includes modeling (with think-alouds), genre instruction, and scaffolded support

Story Grammar

The elements of characters, setting, and plot that are found in narrative text.

Structured literacy

The most effective approach for students who experience unusual difficulty learning to read and spell printed words.

Summative assessment

Evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit.

Syllable types

Orthographic classification of syllables. There are six syllables using a reliable pattern to aid pronunciation & spelling

Syntax

The set of principles that dictate the sequence and function of words in a sentence-includes grammar, sentence structure, and the mechanics of language

Systematic Instruction

Methodological; carried out using step-by-step procedures determined by the nature of the system being used or taught

Task

The assignment or reason we write. This can define the text type, genre, audience, and purpose of the writing.

Text generation

Composing ideas and concepts into words, sentences, and discourse. Part of the Simple View of Writing.

Text structure

The internal structures of informational/expository texts, including: cause/effect, problem/solution, description, compare/contrast, and time order/sequence.

Text types

Text organized by common characteristics such as informational/expository, narrative, and opinion/argumentative text.

Tone

An attitude of a writer conveyed through the choice of words or the viewpoint of a writer on a particular subject.

Transcription

The act of copying text, and/or the process of converting spoken language into text.

Working memory

The process of holding on to (i.e., short-term memory) and manipulating information over short periods of time while simultaneously carrying out processing operations

Writing Curriculum-Based Measures (CBMs)

Assessments that measure how well a student performs for the standards of a particular curriculum

Writing fluency

Writing words at an appropriate rate with a high level of accuracy.