Writing and Grammar

Writing: Teaching-Learning Strategies
This site for teachers identifies elements of pre-writing, writing, and revising. Ideas range from specific writing topics or assignments to general suggestions for designing classroom or assignment structure that supports the writing process. Strategies, questions, and guidelines for revising are especially thorough and clearly identify the difference between editing content and proofreading for mechanical errors. A student writing process checklist and sample scoring rubrics provide helpful tools for assessment.

Guide to Grammar and Writing
Grammar and writing guidelines on this page are organized into sentence level, paragraph level, and essay level. The sentence and paragraph level topics focus mainly on the mechanics of writing; essay level topics cover content and structure. Many topics include quizzes for practice and self-assessment. The site was created by a community college professor but covers basics appropriate for junior high and high school students.

Basic Guide to Essay Writing
This site describes the processes of pre-writing and then walks through each part of an essay from topic sentence to conclusion. For classroom use or later reference, print out the steps in a seven-page PDF document. A sample essay provides an example of each element and there are extensive links to other online resources on writing, grammar, study skills, and tutoring. The links to other writing sites include general essay writing as well as sites on specific styles like literary critiques, persuasive essays, and college admission essays.

Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)
This section of the OWL site outlines the skills and processes needed for gathering information and preparing a research paper. Handouts, online workshops, Power Point presentations, and exercises discuss gathering data, evaluating resources, paraphrasing, citing sources, outlining, writing a paper step-by-step, and more.