The Writing Tutor

1. The Writing Tutor • Develop knowledge • Develop motor skills • Prewriting activities • Simple sentences • Proofreading • Motivational writing

2. Motivational writing • How do we encourage writing? • Some techniques • Journals (Write-teach approach) • Start with pictures (Language Experience Approach) • Manipulatives (Sentence strips)

3. Develop motor skills • Many physical aspects of writing may interfere with the writing process and frustrate students’ productivity. • Involved • Some handwriting techniques are: • Arm and finger movements • Wrist and body positioning and strength • Fading dotted lines • Sentence strips • Talking through the process

4. Prewriting activities • Students are poor in planning skills(Graham & Harris) • Check students’ knowledge of subject • Talk with students about the paper development and genre • Diagramming the potential paragraph or paper

5. Simple sentences • Sentence structure needs to be developed systematically (outcome often matched to memory) • Inventive Spelling • Steps to sentence development • Teacher gives sentence – student identifies formula • Teacher gives sentence – student states formula or nonsentence • Teacher gives formula and opening – student finishes the sentence • Teacher gives formula – student gives sentence

6. Proofreading • Poor reading makes it difficult to check one’s writing. • Avoid excessive corrections • Self-check questions • Did I include my information? • Are the paragraphs purposeful? • Are the paragraphs developed adequately? • Are the paragraphs varied sufficiently? • Does each sentence match the point of the paragraph? • Is each paragraph needed?

7. Summation • Name two ways to build writing motivation. • Name one activity to improve handwriting. • Name one prewriting activity. • Why should we teach sentence formulas? • Name one idea for correcting a student’s work.