What Are the Stages of the Writing Process?

o The writing process is what students think and do when they write. There are 5 stages to the writing process.
1. Pre-writing: is when students get ready to write. In pre-writing, students spend most of their time choosing a topic, consider their purpose for writing, consider who their audience is going to be, the form that they want to use, and where they organize their ideas for writing. Students can organize their ideas through webs, clusters, or graphic organizers.

2. Drafting: is when students get their ideas down on paper. In drafting, the paper is called a rough draft. This is a time to pour out ideas, with little concern about spelling, punctuation, and other mechanical errors.

3. Revising: is when students refine ideas in their writing. Once the drafting stage is done students need to take a break from their work for about 3 hours and then reread, share with other, and make revisions. Revising is when students add information, take away information, deleting information, or rearranging information.

4. Editing: is when students put the piece of writing into its final form. The way students edit their paper is through correcting their spelling, punctuation, grammar, handwriting, and capitalization. In this stage, it is also important to note that not all errors will be fixed and that’s okay.

5. Publishing: is when students write a final copy and share them orally with their appropriate audience. There are many ways to publish students’ writing. Student’s work can be done by:

o Making it into a book.
o Submitting the piece to a writing contest.
o Record the writing on a cassette tape.
o Submit it to a literary magazine.
o Read it at a school assembly.
o Share it at a read-aloud party.
o Send it to a pen pal.
o Display it on a bulletin board.