Last week was a big week for writing assessments as well as professional development planning.  I was also working on some planning for future demonstrations. . . typical multi-tasking for a fairly typical week!  I actually kept a post-it open on my desktop to keep track of my writing process for this blog because it was the purest “creation” that I was developing.  Most of the other pieces were revisions or combinations of other past work.

The picture below from Jan Burkins and  Kim Yaris fascinated me last week!  Stop and read that blog about the writing process if you haven’t yet, because there is so much wisdom about what each of these “steps” really looks like!  Not every single second of writing is visible so take a deep breath and consider your own writing process as you develop a piece of writing from planning to publication.

My mini-research:  Does my writing parallel this?

What was my topic for this next slice?  

I had spent some time in December looking at my blog data and wondering what my top blog posts were for 2014 when I wrote an average of two posts per week or at least one “slice” each week as well as a daily “slice” during March.

To begin my planning for this post, I went to my data to double check the top five blog posts and then created this table in Word. After previewing it, I decided that I didn’t like the “picture of the table” so I went with a word version so the links would be clickable. This caused a major discussion with myself about how I would classify adding links to the table. Was that Revision or Editing?  (I went with editing due to “surface changes”!)

My top topics for 2014 were:  Close Reading, Text Complexity, and #TCRWP Writing (2) and Reading (1). . . a mixed list.  Looking back at blog data for previous years revealed that “Close Reading in Kindergarten?  Is it Possible?” was also my top blog post for 2013.  (As a side note “Close Reading and the Little Ones” was also a great presentation at #NCTE14 by Chris Lehman, Kate Roberts, and Kristi Mraz. Check out Catherine Flynn’s post here about the presentation and how she used it.)

I learned two things about my process for writing blog posts.

1) I keep a list of possible blog topics.  By the time a topic is put on this list, I have already begun the pre-writing process.  I’m not sure that I can accurately record how often I work on “prewriting” because the list often includes two or three specific ideas about the topic.

2) I needed to add another step to the writing process.  Sometimes I do collect some information/evidence collaboratively with others.  However, that is NOT the step that I added as I developed this post. This post included both a picture and a table import with multiple opportunities to “check” or “preview” my work.  I included that as another step in the writing process.  Typically, I try to check to see what my post looks like on both a PC and a Mac because it is never the same.  Maybe the “preview” is important because I worry about the “publish” button.  It is still scary to push that button and then see that my post  does not match my “vision” for writing.

So here’s my best representation of my process for writing this blog post.

Does everyone use the same exact process?

What does your writing process look like?

What are the implications for your students?

Tuesday is the day to share a “Slice of Life” with Two Writing Teachers. Check out the writers, readers and teachers here. Thanks to Stacey, Anna, Beth, Tara, Dana and Betsy for creating a place for us to share our work.