The Writing Process: Myths and Misconceptions

The Writing Process: If Only Writing Were This Simple is a visual depiction that debunks the belief that the writing process is linear or sequential. It shows the stage of the writing process as originally taught with a red x across it.

The writing process is not linear nor is it sequential; therefore, teachers should not approach writing instruction with the mindset that they must teach writing and students must learn how to write in the order the writing process outlines (i.e., Prewriting/Brainstorming to Drafting, Drafting to Conferencing, Conferencing to Revision, Revision to Editing, and Editing to Publishing). The goal of the writing process is to teach students how to apply and transfer their knowledge and understanding of the writing skills they acquired during classroom instruction into a written product that may be their “best, final” draft. This is not to say that teachers should not hold the academic expectations of students writing or producing a polished written product free of or with limited grammatical or convention errors. It is, on the other hand, a recognition and admission that writing is a messy and difficult skill to master without substantial instructional time, consistent and targeted practice, and the patience to allow students to find their voice, discover their style, and make authorial choices that reflects their individual creativity, thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Writing is a form of communication and expression. It is universal in its concept and evolutionary in its application. Therefore, teachers should help students see writing as a process that will help them communicate across diverse cultures, genres, and modalities, and not solely as an assignment to regurgitate what they have read, learned about a topic, or to meet a particular standard.

Activity: Analyzing How The Writing Process is Taught in Classrooms

The visual depiction of the overall writing process denotes the fluidity, frequency, and stages of the writing process. It contains circles with bulleted lists of components and considerations with arrows moving both teachers and student through the process.

Step One: Examine the image below. Then, reflect upon the following questions:

What does the writing process look like in your classroom?
Does it mirror the image? Why or why not?

There are various ways to display the messiness of the writing process. The idea here is to remind teachers that students can, for example, submit a rough draft of their writing. After conferencing, they may need to return to the Planning Stage and re-work or completely change topics and their purpose. The goal is to have students experience the process in its entirety. Meaning, the ease, discomfort, and sometimes the challenge that comes with taking the parts of writing (i.e., words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs), making decisions regarding purpose and audience to determine style which of the literary devices, figurative language, and/or rhetorical appeals to include, and then, transferring all of the above into their version of a written masterpiece (i.e., essays, poems, short stories, etc.).

Step Two: The Prewriting/Planning Stage. How do you and your students approach writing? Are you allowing students to brainstorm their writing ideas? Do they brainstorm individually, with partners, in small groups, whole class, or with you as the teacher? What strategies, tools, or practices do you have in place to support student brainstorming? The Prewriting/Planning stage is where students will and do wrestle with ideas, thoughts on how to approach their writing, and what details and/or evidence should be included in written work. The may

The visual of the Prewriting Stage in the writing process visually depicts the first step in the writing process. It contains a bulleted list of elements and/or considerations for students and teachers as they begin the writing process. The bulleted list is contained within a circle that is highlighted in red with black arrows to show the fluidity and steps in the process.

The Elementary K-2 Writing Process example visually depicted here contains an example of the final product with written directions on how teachers can support the writing process of Colorado's youngest writers. In the top left corner there is a visual of a storyboard with drawn pictures and sentences. In the bottom right corner, there is a graphic organizer example. Both visuals are supported with an explanation.

Remember, writing is messy, so allow students to organize their thinking organically. Students, like many authors, may not opt to create an organized outline or map of what they intend to write. Teachers may provide different organizers according to grade levels, such as seen above and below.

The depiction added here provides different visual examples for educators and students to use to plan or brainstorm writing. The examples include a web, a narrative brainstorm, and a list with questions to help students narrow down their interests.

The middle and high school examples depicted here writing graphic organizers students can use for brainstorming ideas before approaching writing. The first example in the top left corner contains rows and columns with boxes for students to capture three story ideas. The example in the top right corner is a web with a question in the middle and ideas surrounding it. The bottom left example is another web style graphic organizer.

The Responding, Drafting, and Revision stages of the writing process are highlighted in red to illustrate for teachers, students, parents, and school and district leaders that students will toggle back and forth between these three stages as they write. Therefore, patience, targeted feedback, and understanding that writing is not a linear and sequential process must be built into instructional time.

Step Three: Responding/Conferencing Stage. How are you building in time for teacher/peer conferencing and peer/self-evaluation in your classroom? Does conferencing (i.e., teacher-to-student and student-to-student) and peer/self-evaluation occur consistently throughout the writing process? Teacher/peer conferencing should focus on one, maybe two skills. Refrain from focusing on grammar, punctuation, and spelling until students have a strong topic, clear and specific details, and development of their narrative or informational writing.

Step Four: The Drafting Stage. Are you writing alongside your students? Why of why not? How are you modeling writing for your students? Demonstrating writing in real-time in which students can see your process—how you brainstorm/gather ideas, how you begin drafting, and revisions to your writing—builds confidence, reduces the pressure, and inspires risk taking.

Step Five: Revision. Do you have a revision process in place for your students? If so, how often are students given the opportunity to revise their writing? Does it only occur after they have submitted their first rough draft? How many drafts are students permitted to submit and revise? Writing is iterative! Therefore, students should be permitted to revise their drafts as often as needed in order to turn in their “best” draft. Teachers should place more value on the process than the final product. This does not preclude or negate requiring student submission of what we call a final draft but understanding that even the “best” so-called writers submit their best drafts for publishing.

Essentially, the writing process requires:

Commitment from teachers across all content areas and grade levels.
Consistency in practice, because practice makes permanent.
Flexibility. Writing is not a linear process.
Conferencing in each stage
Modeling writing for students
Acceptance of the best draft as the final product.

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