The Writing Process: Pre-Writing Ideas

Hi, my name is Jamie Priddy, and I am a secondary English teacher. The writing process has always been a very important element of the English classes I teach, but it has taken some time and effort to get to a place where I can get my students excited about and engaged in the process.

My experience with writing in my classes often failed to reach my expectations for myself as a writing teacher and for my students as writers. Many students would rush through writing assignments, not even completing most steps of the process. I discovered that I needed to get my students to buy-in to the process so they could see the value in it.

It was evident that I needed to guide my students through the process and get them engaged with their writing. While reading a book called Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, I ran across something that really made me think about what goes through our mind when beginning a piece of writing: "When I teach a beginning class, it is good. I have to come back to the beginner’s mind, the first way I thought and felt about writing. In a sense, that beginner’s mind is what we must come back to every time we sit down and write. There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before. Each time is a new journey with no maps."

If what Natalie Goldberg says is true, then a freshman sitting in my English 1-2 class, who is already feeling nervous and self-counscious, is feeling even more insecure about actually taking the step to write something down on paper that is his or her own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I didn’t need much more convincing that I was going to have to make this as easy on the students as possible. I needed to help them in the beginning stages of writing when they are feeling no assurance that they will be able to write anything that they feel is good writing.

In Donald M. Murray’s 1972 article, “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product,” he focuses on how teachers can emphasize the process of writing as being the most important aspect, not the product. He states, “Prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer’s time”. If prewriting is to take about 85% of the total process time, then this is the part of the process students need the most guidance with. When students spend some time thinking about what they will write, which words they will use, and how they will use those words to say what they want to say, they see that their writing turns into something in which they can take ownership and feel good about.

My purpose at this webpage is to provide ideas to help teachers guide students through this very important part of the writing process so that your students can begin to see themselves as writers. I hope you will find some useful ideas here that will help engage your students during the very beginning stages of the process.