The Power of the Parts

I’m slowly making my way through the keynote addresses from last week’s Writing Institute.  Today I bring to you my notes and some highlights from Roy Peter Clark’s speech, “The Power of the Parts: How Writers Learn and How Teachers Teach.”

Clark wrote a book I’ve been reading for awhile now, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, which is why I was excited to hear him speak.  What I didn’t expect was to be entertained as well.  Clark is an incredible pianist who serenaded the audience of educators with several songs.  Additionally, he likened music, and the parts that make up songs, to the way we teach writers.  He implored the audience to slow down the parts of the writing process for students.

Everyone has different names for the parts of the writing process.  Clark’s are inspired by Don Murray and can be summarized in eight simple words:

1. Explore
2. Collect
3. Organize
4. Focus
5. Select
6. Plan
7. Draft
8. Revise

In my notes, which follow at the end of this post, are some ideas Clark shared with us for helping us teach the different parts of the writing process to our students.  By understanding all of the parts ourselves, and what they really mean, we can help break down every step of the writing process for the kids in our classrooms so they, too, can understand how the writing process works, flows, and can be used to create a piece of writing that can be shared with others.