A rendering of a wooden raft.Writing

Goals

  • continue with the prewriting phase of the writing cycle
  • determine the RAFTS of a piece of writing

The Learning Task

You have taken part in lessons that spark your ideas for writing with literacy prompts that focused on generating topics that you can return to for writing inspiration (heart maps, hands, life map, awesome ideas) and genres of writing (personal memoir, informational writing, persuasive writing, procedural writing, poetry, fiction).

Idea generation is part of the prewriting phase of the writing process, so too is creating a strong prewriting plan that will make the rest of your writing easier. The acronym RAFTS represents the decisions that a writer must make before beginning a piece of writing. ROLE is the perspective of the writer (a storyteller, a person with a strong opinion); AUDIENCE refers to who will be reading the writing (the tone and voice of the writing depends on this); FORMAT describes the form the writing will take;
TOPIC what the writing is about; and, STRONG VERB describes the purpose of the writing (to inform, to explain, to persuade).

Your turn! You have chosen a topic from your writing territoires and written off the page about your idea. Now choose your audience, format and purpose (strong verb) of your writing and begin your first draft of your writing in the form of your choice. Double space your writing so there is a lot of room to make additions and deletions to your thinking. Remember, this is a step of your writing process not the last.

Daily task! Don’t forget to engage with your Writer’s Notebook: Creating a Place for Reflection

Note: please see the information in this lesson for guidance.