Informational Writing

Informational Writing

"Reading is a critical step in fostering voice in students' content writing. Students need to spend lots of time reading information books that are written with voice...Our students cannot write in a vacuum: They first need to get some image of what their writing in this area might look like."
- Ralph Fletcher

CHAPTER 3: INFORMATIONAL WRITING

Protocol

• DISCOVER
• DESIGN
• REDISCOVER
• REDESIGN

Type A Writing:
Transmits information with authority and expertise.
The kind of prose teachers expect in students' finished reports or final essays.

Type B Writing:
Exploratory writing.
Learning logs, questions, hypotheses, diagrams, nots, maps, informal outlines.

Writing Informational Texts

• Research by Reading Multiple Texts
• Take Notes (Information, Drawings, Questions
• Read and study the structure/features of informational texts
• Go Through the Writing Process

The Writing Process

• Prewriting (Research & Notetaking
• Drafting (Graphic Organizer)
• Mentor Text Inquiry Approach
• Writing & Revising
• Publishing

"To deny the centrality of narrative is to deny our own nature," Newkirk explains. "We seek companionship of a narrator who maintains our attention, and perhaps affection. We are not made for objectivity and pure abstraction-for timelessness. We have 'literary minds" that respond to plot, character, and details in all kind of writing. As humans, we must tell stories."
-Tom Newkirk

"Our students should be learning in a strong, unpretentious prose that will carry their thoughts about the world they live in...In other words: writing with voice. One reason their report writing so often sounds awkwardly formal and pretentious may be that we are rushing our students too quickly from Type B to Type A writing: asking them to write as experts on a subject before they have digested their ideas, before they are ready. -William Zinsswer