Informational Writing - Session One –Organizing for the Journey Ahead

Today we start a unit on writing research reports. I think it makes sense that why you exploring writing, and we are studying explorers in social studies

*As you approach the job of a research report on the whole giant topic of Explorers, what will you bring to help with this project? What kinds of knowledge will you need?

What we need for this kind of writing:

1. Knowledge of how informational texts go

2. Knowledge of the writing process

3. Knowledge about the topic

Materials Needed

Index cards

File Folder

Paper

1. On each index card, write a word or phrase on each card that represents stuff you know about Explorers (You will have two minutes to do this)

2. How do writers bring knowledge to informational writing

3. ORGANIZING- It wouldn’t work to just scoop up all your index cards and shove them into a report.

Teaching Point

• Today, I want to teach you that researchers organize what they are bringing with them to their writing. When things are organized, it is easier to carry those things—that is true for information , also.

1. So writers, once you’ve written lots of index cards to yourself that represent ideas you want to bring to your writing, you will need to organize them into categories

2. So, to get ready to write your information book, your job is to set up you pages-the ones for each subtopic

3. First, we’ll do this together with some of my index cards, and then you can do this on your own.

4. I am going to look over my social studies and think of some of the topics

5. Let’s make a list:

Now you will get four or five sheets of paper to put in your file folder

You will need to put the index card at the top of the page if it serves as a section heading, or put it further down on the page if it is not a heading, but instead a point found within the subtopic

Link-Before you get started on that, I want to let you know a bit more about how this unit will go. Once you’ve set up your index cards and pages today, tomorrow you’ll be ready for a flash draft.

***That’s right, you will write a whole draft, quick, quick, quick tomorrow! Your flash draft will tell me what you already know about your topic and about information writing about history. You will be amazed by how much you are going to learn and how your writing will change over the next several weeks.

**Remember writers spend time collecting and organizing information, making categories that are subtopics. They imagine how those subtopics could fit together into a structure. That is one way writers get started.

OTHER WAYS TO HELP YOURSELF GET READY TO WRITE

• Teach someone what you know• Study published authors to see how they have done the same work•Get Feedback on your plan for writing- WRITING PARTNER

Tomorrow (Monday) you write

• The next class we will be flash drafting • Today you will want to spend some time

getting ready.• You may use books, start looking at them

today in preparation for Monday• MAKE SURE YOU COME PREPARED TO START

DRAFTING YOUR RESEARCH REPORT. Don’t lose index cards, folders