Molly Herrington Prep Writing 2 Spring 2000 When a student is writing a paragraph for school, there are several steps he or she must follow. To begin this process, the student must have a topic. Sometimes the student will be able to pick the topic, but usually the teacher will give him or her a topic. After the student has a broad topic, he or she should narrow the topic to one that doesn’t have a million possibilities. Next, the student should do some prewriting, such as listing or clustering ideas or even free writing, to get all of his or her ideas out on paper but in no specific order. Then the student should create an outline putting his or her ideas in a logical order. After the ideas are organized, the student should create a topic sentence, which is usually the first sentence in the paragraph; the topic sentence states the main idea and lets the reader know what he or she is about to read. After writing the topic sentence, the student should start his or her first or rough draft; in this draft the student puts all ideas in a logical order and makes sure that he or she includes many supporting details. Now the student must revise the paragraph. During this step, the student adds forgotten steps and makes changes to improve his or her piece. Finally, the student must edit the paragraph by correcting all spelling and grammatical errors. This will be the final draft, and it will be well developed and ready to be read....
