Looking for Connections between Ideas
Purpose: This exercise aims to teach students how to construct effective transitions in their writing and look for connections between...
Picturing Transitions: Narrating Scene Shifts
Purpose: This activity will help students create effective transitions between paragraphs and topics in their writing. It should also get...
“AC/DC? No, AB/BC!” Arrangement for Transition and Emphasis
Purpose: This brief editorial exercise shows students how transitions are created through arrangement and how arrangement can be used to...
Out of Sequence: Organization and Transition Exercise
Purpose: This activity challenges students to order paragraphs logically and create smooth transition sentences, teaching them to...
Titles (say so much)
Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is to help students recognize the importance of titles, showing students that there needs to be a...
The Wet Beagle: Show Me, Don't Tell Me Workshop
Purpose: To prepare students for workshopping and the writing of their first paper. An easy exercise for demonstrating descriptive...
Stylistic Revision: Maximizing Clarity and Directness
Purpose: The goal of Stylistic Revision is to concentrate on sentence construction in later revisions, focusing on concision and detail....
Raising the Stakes: Adding Tension and Intensity to a Story
Purpose: This exercise helps students learn to become more effective writers of fiction. It could be quite useful in any course in which...
Proofreading Pitfalls Handout for Self-Editing
Purpose: This short paragraph makes a good handout, or discussion-started on the overhead some time before the final drafts of a paper...
Make it Interesting/Make me Want to Read it: Catchy Openings
Purpose: This exercise works to develop strong first sentences and unique voices in student writing. Description: This is a voice...