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Key Points
- A plan can also be called a scaffold.
- Creating a plan helps to organise your ideas and guide your writing.
- A good plan makes sure you answer the question and follows the rubric.
- A plan can also help you break your assessment up into smaller easier tasks.
- You can get feedback on your plan before you start writing.
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How to create a plan (scaffold)
To create a scaffold, you outline your writing into sections and paragraphs, specify the main points to each as well as the number of words. A plan can include:
- an introduction paragraph at the beginning, which should normally take around 10% of the word limit;
- a conclusion paragraph at the end, which should normally take another 10% of the word limit; and
- a series of body paragraphs in between. Each body paragraph presents one main idea or argument, supported by evidence or examples to illustrate the idea.
Depending on the topic and requirements of your assessment task (e.g. genre, length), and your ideas or arguments, you can decide on the number of body paragraphs, the main idea and the word approximation allocated to each one.
Below is a general assignment scaffold template that you can use to outline and plan your writing.
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Checklist for plan:
- Have I included everything from the assessment instructions?
- Do I have a word count for each section?
- Does the word count I have allocated match the weighting in the rubric?
- Have I included an introduction and conclusion if needed?
- Do I have references for each section?
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