Poor organization often destroys an otherwise good paper. After writing a first draft, individuals consider the organization of ideas, a topic discussed in the 16th handout in the 24-part Writing the Paper series. The resource covers five ways to reorganize a draft and provides specific examples of each strategy.

Concepts

essay organization, writing organization, paragraph organization

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Place learners into groups and have each group practice one strategy mentioned in the handout; share the experience with the rest of the class
• Model one strategy a day using the same paper or topic to make it easier to see the differences

Classroom Considerations

• If displaying using a project or interactive whiteboard, use a pointer or highlighting tool to point out key pieces of information

Pros

• Links to other materials to introduce related concepts
• Uses bulleted lists, bold font, and other text features to make the content easier to skim and scan

Cons

• Suggests writing a draft first, but some strategies work best when used before writing a first draft

Common Core

W.9-10.4 W.9-10.5 W.11-12.4 W.11-12.5