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Empowered Fiction Writers: Generating and Organizing Ideas for Story Writing Overview This three-part lesson introduces students to the use of speedwriting (also called free writing) as a prewriting technique. Learning the technique of speedwriting allows students to generate a foundation of ideas on which they can build a narrative structure. Students then identify key ideas and phrases in their speedwriting, and organize their ideas around the main elements of a story (exposition, rising action, climax, conclusion).

This would be a fun activity for writing feature articles! Fun with any kind of writing, really. . .

Curious about how complex your documents or Web pages are to read? You don't have to get a team of experts to generate your readability score: you can just use readability.info to analyze the characteristics of your writing and ascertain a multitude of readability scores. By comparing the readability score of different documents (or Web pages) you can better hone your writing and make sure that you aren't creating overly complex sentences and paragraphs for your audience.

Option for EAP students creating headers for blogs

Teach grammar. It provides a metalanguage - a language to describe, use and craft our language. For many of our students Standard Australian English is a foreign dialect. Students need to hear and see correct models of language in use. Provide real reasons for students to speak and write formally. Provide daily opportunties to express complexity of thought, in all subject areas. Insist that the 'click and go' generation ask and respond to both oral and written questions in whole sentences.

Today's youth are active creators and producers who use a wide range of digital tools to express themselves, interpret the world around them, and deepen their understanding of academic content. Their products include original music, animation, video, stories, graphics, presentations, and Web sites.

Classroom Strategies Explicit strategy instruction is at the core of good comprehension instruction. "Before" strategies activate students' prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. "During" strategies help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and stay focused. "After" strategies provide students an opportunity to summarize, question, reflect, discuss, and respond to text. Teachers should help students to understand why a strategy is useful, how it is used, and when it is appropriate. Teacher demonstration and modeling are critical factors for success, and student discussion following strategy instruction is also helpful. The most frequently researched strategies can be applied across content areas; other content-area specific strategies are emerging, and we will include them here in the future.