Purposeful Webs: This was a game changer for my writing teaching JOurneY! Before “Purposeful Webs”, my students’ prewriting strategy looked like the picture below. Often we would create this web as a class! I would be so proud of my students and the 80 bubbles we were able to create on the given prompt. The more spokes the better! I secretly hoped the principal would stroll by the room and see the massive amount of learning occurring in my room! However, as soon as we were done and I was ready to turn students loose on crafting the rough draft, the response was always the same, “Now what?” This is when Mrs. Ferguson would use her inner strength to not go howler monkey on the children. I would inevitable say, “Look at the web, there are plenty of ideas and begin to write!” But it doesn’t work that way for most of our writers!

A purposeful web allows us to give students concrete rules on how to create the web (an excellent prewrite strategy) and more importantly how to transfer the web into writing a rough draft. This tool fits perfectly with Step Up to Writing’s color-coding system for expository/informational text.  I would love to tell you more about this and connect with you, so drop me an email!