Prewriting is the getting ready to write stage. Gatz (2004) states that “pre-writing is the key in the development of a “good” essay and the evolution of “good” writing skills.” Pre-writing is a different process than drafting, revising, and the final draft; because it is the delineation of the initial idea of the topic they will be writing about. It will guide the writer into an organized outline of possible ideas, topics, and/or comments. The traditional notion that writers have a topic completely thought out and ready to flow onto the page is ridiculous. If writers wait for ideas to fully develop, they may wait forever. Instead writers should begin tentatively- talking, reading, writing- to discover what they know and decide what direction they want to take. Pre-writing has probably been the most neglected stage in the writing process; however, it is as crucial to writers as a warm- up is to athletes (Tompkins, 2005). Murray (1982) believes that at least 70% of writing time should be spent in prewriting. During pre-writing stage students should be engaged in choosing a topic, free writing, considering the purpose, forming an audience, generating and organising ideas for writing.
Brainstorming can help you choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic’s potential. A brainstorm is a sudden insight or inspiration. As a pre-writing strategy, brainstorming uses free association to stimulate a chain of ideas, often to personalize a topic and break it down into specifics. When one brainstorms, he or she starts with a word or phrase and spend a set of time simply scribbling a list of ideas as rapidly as possible, writing down whatever comes to mind with no editing or going back.
When I brainstorm, I generally use this approach:
I start with a key word or phrase - one that will launch my thoughts in a productive direction. If I need a topic, I begin with a general word or phrase (for example when I needed a research topic for my Communication II course, I simply put the phrase “economic integration” on paper and these are the steps that I followed:
• I set a 10 minute time limit to think.
• I then rapidly list words or phrases or short sentences so that I could scan later
• I pay no attention to spelling, repetition, absurdity or relevance. I simply record whatever comes into my head.
• When I am finished, I circle or check anything that suggests a provocative direction. I scratch out whatever looks useless or dull and then I try to organise by ideas by grouping them.
It never occurred to me that there were so many other brainstorming techniques that can be used during the pre-writing stage instead of using the same approach all the time. Such techniques include: 3 perspectives, Cubing, Similes, Relationship between the parts, Journalistic questions, Thinking outside the box, Using charts or shapes. However I am familiar with the Clustering/mapping/webbing technique since my secondary school English teacher as well as my General Paper teacher highly recommended them as a means of generating ideas before we wrote our essays.
Sloane (2010) states that “good brainstorming skills can take children a long way/ The better your class is at brainstorming, the more they will get out of any curriculum area that requires their input.” Therefore, as teachers, we need to structure children’s experiences with brainstorming so that they receive enough direction to keep them on track, but not so much that we take over. As I read through the article, I can remember giving my students the word “Planets” and they were required to form as many words as they can from the word during a period and the activity was very engaging. Basically, the more children brainstorm, the better they will be at it.
As teachers, I suggest that we encourage brainstorming in every classroom. We also need to choose topics well. If we cannot think of at least 10 responses, we should not be surprised if the children cannot either. Furthermore, we need to choose topics that offer real opportunities for generating a large number of varied ideas. It is also important to genuinely want children’s input. For example, we should not hold firmly to our own ideas or see them as acceptable and reject the ideas of the students.
Equally important, Lee (2007) states that graphic organizers could be useful revising tools in the pre -writing stage. I have always liked the idea of working with graphic organisers. As a student we were encouraged to use them but it was limited to mapping, t- chats and cluster. After reading the information presented in this unit on graphic organisers, I realize the diversity in the choice of graphic organisers. I like the idea that when I return to the classroom there is a wide range of graphic organisers that I can expose my students to and more importantly they will be able to use those which best apply to the activity they will be doing. The graphic organisers which I found more interesting are:
• The Spider Graphic Organizer: This organizer can be used for helping students understand how a central theme can have several convergent ideas or issues. Further, they can describe some of the details that are associated with each idea.
• The Fishbone Graphic Organizer: This organizer can be used for helping students understand how a result can have several convergent causes. And further, they can describe some of the details that are associated with each cause.
• The Cycle Graphic Organizer: This organizer can be used for helping students understand how events or issues can be circular or cyclic.
Graphic organisers may be a viable choice in scaffolding revision in addition to text because they enable writers to see better what they are revising. I learnt that this ability to ‘see’ better may be better offered by organisers with perceptual operations as opposed to those without. This is because organisers with perceptual operations differentiate main ideas from sub-ideas clearly and provide an overview of how the ideas in the organisers are related to one another which facilitates categorization and diagnosis of writing problems in the revision process. This possible advantage however precludes that students must be properly trained over a period of time to understand the form and function of each organiser so that they would not misinterpret the ideas in the organisers when generating or revising ideas in their own organisers or when providing feedback on their peers’ organisers.
My concern lies chiefly in getting my students to develop the necessary skills from the following strategies; but I believe if we as teachers plan and execute lessons which emphasize the development of these skills effectively, then the students can indeed acquire the skills.
Self - Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD): writing where the focus is on learning task specific strategies for composing. This approach is designed to make the use of strategies habitual, flexible and automatic in writing. The procedure involves developing and activating background knowledge, discussing the strategy, modeling the strategy, memorizing the strategy, supporting the strategy and student independent performance (Harris & Graham, 1996).
Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI): this approach emphasizes the development of thinking skills and processes as a means to enhance learning. The objective is to enable students to become more strategic, self-reliant, flexible and productive in their learning endeavours.
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