Presented by Marcia Baxter South Carolina Virtual Charter School

Take a minute and think about all of the writing you have done today.

Today’s writing takes many different forms… s Text messages Tweets Blogs Social network pages Thank you notes Personal cards/notes Journal writing

LOL OMG Thx K IDK POS *(MOS or DOS) BBFN

Learning to write to a prompt for school assessments is still important. South Carolina currently assesses student writing in grades 5 and 8 and on HSAP. Each grade level will have one extended-response item and 25 multiple-choice items which assess the writing domains of content and development, organization, voice and conventions. The extended-response item is based on a 15 point rubric.

The narrative tells a story The persuasive tries to convince the audience The descriptive describes something The expository or explanatory gives information or explains something

Prewriting Drafting Revising Editing Publishing

Pick a topic or read the prompt given Think about what you are writing and who will read it. (This is often stated in the prompt…for example “Tell about a special time with family and friends” Brainstorm ideas. Make lists. Collect details about the topic. Make a web or outline. Use a graphic organizer.

Take the prompt and write a topic sentence. Write at least three subsequent sentences that state a reason, detail or fact about your topic. Don’t worry about spelling/grammar in this stage. Just write all of your ideas.

“re” means again… “vis” means to see Revising means seeing again. In this stage you are looking at your writing and seeing it again in light of making it easier to read, making it sound better, etc. This stage is NOT about correcting your mistakes, although revising and editing often happen simultaneously. The intent in revision is making your paper better by varying sentence length and structure, making better word choices, helping the reader be able “see” the action.

During this process you check for all types of mistakes in capitalization, usage(grammar), punctuation and spelling. CUPS The student will be able to use a dictionary and a thesaurus during this process. Read the whole paper to yourself and listen for errors. Check the spelling of any word you are not sure about, but don’t stress over spelling…if the word is above the student’s grade level, spelling does not count off.

For the purpose of the test, publishing is writing the final copy. This copy should be as error-free as possible. This copy MUST be legible, too.