Organization Young writers develop strategies and a repertoire of discourse structures, and become more able to produce coherent sequences of ideas. Strategies develop to help young writers organize their ideas. Early organizational strategies include the use of pictures to help young writers keep in mind the ideas that are to be written about. A child might draw a picture of three bears sitting around a picnic basket, then go on to describe in writing the circumstances associated with the picture. Later, as children are exposed to various types of writing, they become able to adopt literary forms or genres.
Genres provide structure.
One of the early organizational strategies to emerge is the chronological ordering of events. They later become able to adopt more advanced ways of organizing written work as described above in their use of genre. It is quite common however, for highschool students to have difficulty with expository writing. This is likely the result of limited exposure to, and instruction about forms of exposition in the middle grades. It is believed that maturing expository writing through the middle school years, may be the root of strong essay and research writing in later years.