Preparing Students to Write the Assignment

Do you hate getting sub-par work that your students have bashed out the night before? Here’s how to guide your students through the necessary stages of thinking and writing so they turn in well-considered and well-constructed writing.

“I do not distinguish between creative and critical writing because all writing is creative. There is a pen filled with black ink. There is a blank sheet of paper. Whatever the product—poem, story, essay, letter to lover, technical report—the problem is the same: the page is empty and will have to be filled. Out of nothing, something. And all writing is critical, requiring the same shifting, selection, scrutiny and judgment of the material at hand.”