- CHOOSING THE TOPIC
Get the students to choose the topic themselves to make them feel engaged with the writing task. Write the chosen topic on the board.
- NOTE TAKING
Encourage students to close their eyes and think about the topic for a minute or two, in silence. Afterwards give them two minutes to note down their ideas. Then, working in groups, students compare and discuss their ideas, transferring them to their mind maps as they go.
- FEEDBACK
Make a collective mind map on the board, drawing on your students’ ideas. It’s at this feedback stage that language problems can be ironed out. As you elicit students’’ ideas, you can help them to reformulate expressions or correct them if necessary.
- ORGANIZING MIND MAPS
Ask students to organize their maps into a linear format to decide the best way in which to present their points. They should first think about the overall structure and then focus on the precise each paragraph will have in their final text.
- WRITING
Ask students to begin writing their compositions, working in pairs if they wish, after two paragraph, they exchange their compositions, so they become readers of each other’s work. This allows for feedback and possible re-writing. Once they have finished, they gain exchange their texts. This gives their texts a communicative purpose, as well as developing the awareness that a writer is always producing something to be read by some else.