How To Improve My Writing

CONVENTIONS AND SPELLING:

•       ALWAYS put spaces between your words.
•       Write legibly.
•       Use capital letters correctly nearly all of the time. Remember to capitalize the beginning of sentences, specific names (people, places, months, days of the week, etc.), and the word “I”. DON’T use capital letters when lowercase letters should be used.
•      Use end punctuation correctly nearly all the time. Make sure your questions end with question marks, and your statements end with periods. Use exclamation marks when you want to show strong emotion, but don’t overuse them.
•       Separate your complete ideas into sentences. Don’t overuse “and” and “then” in place of punctuation.
•       Start your sentences in different ways to make them more interesting to the reader.
•       Use commas or semicolons to separate the two ideas in compound sentences.
•       Spell all K-2 “In a Snap” words correctly and all grade 3 “In a Snap” words once they have been taught.
•       Spell 3^rd grade words correctly. This means you use the spelling rules you are taught in class and make use of references like word walls and word banks.

ORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS:

•       Make sure your writing always includes a beginning and an ending that clearly relate to your topic.
•       Report your ideas in an order that will make sense to your reader.
•       Use transition words or phrases like, “next”, “later that afternoon”, “another reason”, etc. to help sequence your ideas for the reader.
•       Only include information that is important to your story or topic. Leave out unrelated or unimportant ideas.
•       Develop a few main ideas with interesting details rather than listing lots of details without developing them.
•       Make your writing interesting by using techniques like dialogue (characters talking), sensory details, strong verbs, figurative language, and interesting adjectives (describing words).