Writing Process #1- Pre-Writing and Planning

To begin the writing process, both with my informational and narrative essays, I began with an outline. This is the simplest way for me to begin visualizing and plotting where I want my essay to go, and what points I want to include. With my informational essay, I started by reading the provided articles, as well as the one other article that I found on "The Reading Teacher." I then pulled some quotes that I found rather important, and grouped them into their appropriate categories in my outline. My outline included three main body paragraphs in addition to the introduction and conclusion: define the genre, why is it important, and strategies for teaching and reading this genre. I chose 2-3 quotes per category. For my narrative essay, I made an outline that concerned what events, characters, and settings I wanted to include in my paper. I then researched different types of historical fiction for young children and wrote down some ideas for my paper. I decided upon a first person narrative, in the style of a diary entry, written from the perspective of an English, female Pilgrim. Finally, for both essays, I set about 2-4 goals that wanted to have accomplished by the final drafts. They included the length of the paper, grammatical concerns, amount of information, and the depth of information.