3.2  What is Effective Organization

You've practiced analyzing a task for its purpose, audience, and other contexts. You've practiced analyzing a text for its structure and purpose. You've practiced writing controlling ideas and developing your ideas with different methods. The next trait on the rubric is Organization. Effective writing has a structure or pattern. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It holds together. It is unified. It includes transitions --words, phrases, and longer elements that help to connect one idea to another and keep the reader on track.

Another Scene, with Candy

Amy is five. She has opened a bag of M&M candies and is designing things with the colored candies. First, she makes a bicycle. The frame is made of yellow candies (her favorite color). She decides on red for the front wheel and blue for the back wheel.

She eats one candy of each color, separates the candy into colors again, and moves on to her next design. This one is a flower in a pot. She makes the pot light brown, the stem of the flower green, and the flower itself orange and dark brown. Next, she makes her masterpiece, a landscape (this requires opening a second bag). Green grass, red sidewalks, a blue sky with orange clouds, a narrow brown stream with a yellow bridge crossing this is her landscape.

Suppose you drop in. You have some requests.

You: Make a Challenger spacecraft.

Amy: I can't. I don't know what that looks like.

You: Okay, how about a manta ray?

Amy: I don't know what that looks like.

You: All right. How about a vole?

Amy: Why don't you go play with somebody your own age?

---

< Previous page    Table of Contents    Next page >