Assignment Purpose: For this assignment, you prepare to write a This I Believe essay by generating ideas and planning how to organize your essay.

Assignment Description: There are two parts to this assignment:
1) Practice a technique called freewriting for five minutes. When you freewrite, you write without stopping for a set period of time. Do not stop. Do not worry about spelling or grammar. Do not censor your ideas. Just keep writing. If you get stuck, repeat a prompting question or the topic until something comes to you. Freewriting is about quantity rather than quality. We'll reverse that philosophy when we start writing your essay, but for now focus on generating as many ideas as you can. When freewriting, you are not evaluated on how good your ideas are – just that you have a lot of writing and thoughts to work with. To start your prewrite, consider this question: “What are your most cherished beliefs?”.

2) Practice planning your essay. To plan what you want to write and in what order, try either an outline or a skeleton draft. An outline follows a specific format for organizing your ideas into paragraphs with some details mapped out. A skeleton draft is writing what you imagine the first sentence of each paragraph will be to get a picture of your essay sub-topics from start to finish. You do not need to write the full essay, just map out a few of the ideas you plan to include.
See a sample of what this assignment looks like here: Preparing for Your This I Believe Essay.docx

How to submit your assignment:
After you complete your essay in a word document, save your work, you will need to attach the completed document to your submission. The process will be similar to making an attachment to an e-mail:

Under Attach File, click on "Browse My Computer."
Look up your saved document, and click "Open.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click "Submit."