SAS® Writing Navigator takes young writers from plan to polish to publish
Free interactive resource for student writers now available as Google docs add-on
Communicate clearly. Persuade logically. Paint vivid mental pictures. Evoke emotion. These are the hallmarks of good writing. They’re also glaringly absent from many students’ skillsets. From the makers of SAS® Curriculum Pathways®, SAS Writing Navigator helps instill mastery in young writers. The toolkit teaches students to ask themselves the questions experienced writers ask at each stage of writing: planning, drafting, revising and publishing.
The award-winning resource helps students understand the purpose of their writing, organize and convey their main points, spot missed opportunities and revise their work, and finally document sources and publish a final draft. Available free at a new website, WritingNavigator.com, SAS Writing Navigator also remains available from the SAS Curriculum Pathways site and through iPad® and Chromebook apps. All that’s required is a SAS Curriculum Pathways account.
Four tools within SAS Writing Navigator guide students through the writing process:
- Writing Planner uses a graphic organizer to get students thinking about their purpose, audience and main ideas.
- Writing Drafter helps students transform rough ideas into an essay, always thinking critically about purpose and audience.
- Writing Reviser uses a language parser to analyze the student’s work, focusing on essay structure alongside sentence economy, variety, power and clarity. Highlighting areas that may need revision (e.g., passive voice, dangling modifiers, weak verbs, wordiness), it helps students make informed decisions about their work.
- Writing Publisher teaches proofreading, helping students see their text anew. They review what they’ve actually written rather than what they meant to write. Writing Publisher also helps them collect sources and prepare MLA-style documentation for research papers.
Writing Reviser comes to Google Docs
Many teachers have students write in Google Docs so they can easily share their work. Now, with the ability to open Writing Reviser add-on within Google Docs, students can call up the most popular resource in SAS Curriculum Pathways as they work.
SAS Writing Reviser targets more than 20 problem areas from the macro scale (e.g., thesis statements) to micro scale (e.g., diction). The new add-on for Google Docs embeds the tool in the writing process, helping students focus on such editing goals as:
- Economy: Finding ways to be more concise and direct.
- Variety: Varying sentence structure to more fully engage readers.
- Power: Writing more forcefully.
- Clarity. Enhancing coherence by improving diction, parallelism and usage.
SAS Writing Navigator components are among more than 1,500 resources available in SAS Curriculum Pathways. Used by more than 580,000 teachers and students, SAS Curriculum Pathways provides tools, resources and apps in English language arts, mathematics, science, social studies and Spanish. Proven in traditional, virtual and home schools, they’re built for how students learn. SAS Curriculum Pathways increases student learning and teacher effectiveness by targeting higher-order thinking skills. Mapping resources to both individual state and Common Core standards helps educators across the country in their planning.
SAS in education
With a special focus on education, SAS strives to give everyone THE POWER TO KNOW®. From SAS Curriculum Pathways free digital curriculum and mobile apps for K-12, to free and low-cost access to world-class software offered through SAS Analytics U, SAS is committed to learners of all ages. Additionally, SAS collaborates with colleges and universities around the world to launch degree and certificate programs to foster the current and next generation of analytics talent. With nearly four decades of working in education, SAS brings together individuals, institutions, communities and data to prepare people for college, career, life and brighter futures.
Trent Smith
919-531-4726
About SAS
SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 75,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2015 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
Tags: