Ask students to choose one piece of writing they’re currently working on. Write five different leads for that piece. Then, meet in response groups to share the leads and talk about which are most effective. (Try the same activity with conclusions!)

Ask each student to find an example of a good lead – from a book, newspaper article, or whatever. Then, find an example that does NOT work. Make a bulletin board display of both collections. (Again, do the same with conclusions.)

Find an article (or story) with fairly clear organization. Reprint it with two of the lines missing. Put those on an overhead or chalkboard. Ask students, working with a partner, to see if they can identify where the missing lines would go.

Find any short story or article (poems work, too!) that has a fairly unpredictable ending. Read it aloud. Then ask students to write an ending for it. Share endings aloud as a class or in smaller response groups to talk about which work best.

Face it - one of the hardest things for student writers to do is to get rid of deadwood - information that does not matter and so does not add anything to the quality of the writing. Begin with a short article, essay or narrative you think is well done. Then, add some excess baggage - up to three lines or so - at the beginning or end or both. Ask students to be critical content editors, getting rid of anything they think is unneeded. Compare their cuts to the writer’s original. (This is an excellent warmup to content editing of their own work.)

Choose any new picture book students have not heard (you can also use a newspaper article). Write the ending three different ways (one being the original). And print them so you can put them on an overhead. See if students can identify the author’s original. Which one do they like best? It might not be the original!

Ask students to find an example of a recipe or set of directions that is particularly easy to follow. Score it for the trait of organization and write a short critique on its organizational structure.

Take a similar recipe or set of directions (students can actually do this themselves, in groups), cut it apart, and mix the parts up so they’re totally out of order. Have groups trade sets and see which groups can put their sets in order most quickly.

Take any short passage - a letter or memo, or piece of a story or article will do - and rewrite it, adding one line that does not fit. Slip it somewhere in the middle, so they must read very carefully. See how long it takes students to find the extra line. Too easy? Then next time, add two lines - or three. Now, ask students to create the lesson, adding the extra line - then trade with other groups. Immediately following this lesson, ask them to look at their own writing, taking out any excess baggage.

Group students and ask each group to choose one topic - say, hyenas, solar energy, computer monitors, or whatever. Ask students, in groups, to dig up at least 20 different interesting tidbits of information on their topic. Write each tidbit on a 3x5 card. Then, exchange 20-card stacks among groups, so no group has its own notes. Ask students, in groups, to arrange the cards they’ve received from the other group as if they were going to do a research paper on the topic. They should think of the lead - and the ending. They should also feel free to get rid of any cards that contain redundant or obvious, too well known information, keeping just the best details. At the end, they should have similar ideas grouped together, a sense of which information will be shared in the lead and conclusion, and an overall sense of the order of the whole piece. Ask three or more groups to describe their process.

How many ways are there to organize information? Begin a collection of essays, reviews, critiques, stories, directions, descriptions, etc., each with its own kind of organization. You can come up with labels - e.g., comparison-contrast - for the organizational patterns you find, or describe the strategies the writer uses (e.g., begins with a strong conclusion, then defends it with evidence), or both. Try to find at least seven different ways to organize information. As a follow-up, ask students to try at least three of these different ways of structuring information in their own writing.

Compare the organization in a recipe to that in, say, a poem. Why are they so different? What does organization have to do with the writer’s purpose?

Do writers choose a method of organizing information, or does it simply flow out of the writing? This is a good philosophical question for secondary students to ponder - and argue! Ask them to choose a side. Each side will present "evidence" by citing specific written works and talking about how they are organized. Is it likely the writer chose the organization in advance - or just fell into it? At the end of the arguments, ask the class to vote: selection or evolution?

It is often argued that one sign of well organized information is that it can be made into a film. Ask students to find an example of a piece they think is "filmable," and to do a brief storyboard-type layout of how they would film the piece, scene by scene. Where would the close-ups occur? The slow motion? Would any parts be skipped over? Why?

Sometimes we learn the most by doing what does not work. Begin this lesson by asking students to identify a well-organized piece. Then ask them, in groups, to rewrite it - only with poor organization (ideas: remove the lead, weaken the transitions, put things out of order, etc.) Ask groups then to trade pieces, and to try rewriting one another’s badly organized samples to improve the organization. Compare the "improvements" to the originals, talking about what makes organization work.

Ask students to assemble a collection of pieces they consider strong and weak in organization. Post them and talk about the kinds of things that make organization work.

Based on your collection of strong and weak organization samples, do a quick review/critique of any one of the organization rubrics. Does it cover all the bases? Did we miss some important things we should have emphasized? Did we emphasize some things too much? Based on this discussion, your students may wish to develop their own rubric or their own poster for this important trait.