Tag Archives: Writing

Drop Everything and Write! and Bingo

Assessment, Personal Narratives, The Writing Process,

Do you ever feel like there is not enough time to teach writing during a busy school day? I know that feeling! In this blog post, I want to share with you one way I squeeze in a little writing time.

My students build their writing muscles by using the strategy of writing for 10 uninterrupted minutes. This is known as our Drop Everything and Write! for 10 uninterrupted minutes sessions. This strategy can be used when there is not enough time to start a new lesson, but you want your students to be engaged in a meaningful activity.  Plus, no special or extra preparation is needed.

I have created a Drop Everything and Write and Bingo resource that can be used to support you as you implement this strategy in your classroom. It is in available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Our-Writing-Space

The Strategy

Drop Everything and Write! for 10 uninterrupted minutes. A timer is set for 10 minutes. During this time, students and teacher write for the entire time. No one is allowed to talk or do something else. Everyone is engaged in writing! The power of this strategy is that everyone is actively engaged in writing at the same time, for a short time, and it is a daily habit.

Two Writing Bingos

Included in the resource are two Drop Everything and Write! Bingos that can be used to get students’ writing juices flowing and help to warm-up their writing muscles. There are different writing prompts to help them get started with their writing but eventually they will move into writing self-selected topics.

Benefits of This Strategy

Students are writing for a short amount of time.

It is a non-threatening writing activity that can help to

overcome (for some students) the dread of writing.

It helps students to build writing muscles.

It helps to build writing confidence.

Next Steps

After students have completed one of the writing bingos, it can be graded using a  mini writing prompts rubric. Students will not have done any in depth writing, but hopefully, have been inspired to keep writing. The rubric can indicate to the students that they are on the right track with their writing ideas. By using the rubric, you  will be able to monitor how much students are participating when they Drop Everything and Write! for 10 uninterrupted minutes.

The brief writing done in the 10 minutes can lead into the main writing session. Students can take one of the ideas they started in Drop Everything and Write! and develop it in the writing workshop time, during center activities, or during independent writing time. This extended writing can be taken through the writing process by the students. The finished writing can be graded using an extended narrative writing rubric.

What Will You Find In This Resource?

2 Writing Bingos

2 Book Covers (color/black and white)

5 Drop Everything and Write! Mini Posters (Color/ Black and White)

9 Writing Pages

1 Mini Writing Rubric

1 Extended Narrative Writing Rubric

Detailed Teacher Instructions

For more information about how I encourage my student to write for ten uninterrupted minutes, please read the blog post, Building Elementary Writing Muscles.

Happy Writing!

Sonia

The Writing Process

Personal Narratives, The Writing Process, Writing Stamina,

I have found that it is helpful to introduce the writing process to students at the start of the school year and/or before we jump into focused writing. When I do this it helps the students become familiar with the writing process vocabulary, see the big picture of how we will approach writing, and understand the writing process is a guide to help us tackle our writing.

Prewriting

Before students can begin writing they need to have something to write about. This step is intended to help them find an interesting topic through brainstorming, freewriting, generating ideas, listing ideas, talking to others, etc. Students are more likely to take ownership of their writing when they have chosen their own topics.

Drafting

Once an idea has been chosen, I suggest that the first draft be written in their writer’s notebooks. I remind my students that a writer’s notebook is a place to hold their thinking. The first draft will not be and should not be perfect. It will be a skeleton of an idea that needs to be developed. At this stage, students should aim to have a beginning, middle and end to their writing as this will make a peer conference much more productive. Once the writer has a draft it is time to get feedback from a listener/reader. This is a peer conference time. Students may meet as often as they need to, but the meetings should not take over their writing time, and the meeting must help the writer. If this is not carefully structured students will see this as a time to socialize. I suggest that they meet a maximum of ten minutes and then return to their writing spot. The teacher will also be involved in teacher/student conferences.

Revising

This is the step that students enjoy the least because it requires them going back and taking a very close look at the work they have done so far. Often young writers think that writing is done in one take and they want to jump to publishing. Before publishing, they need to ask themselves some revising questions. For example, Did I write about one idea? Do I need to move sentences/paragraphs around? Do I need to add more details? Do I need to delete parts? Does my writing make sense as a whole? If they have had peer or teacher conferences, they should have a few ideas as to how they can move forward in their writing.

The Writing Process Checklist for Students

Editing

This is the time for students to focus on checking grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Students can work on their own or with a partner to check their work. For an effective peer conference, you need to give clear guidelines and model expectations. An editing checklist will help to guide conferences and students working independently.

Publishing

For the final step students will publish their writing in an appropriate format. The format will depend on the genre.

Finally, keep in mind that the writing process steps can involve revisiting some steps more than once. As students work through the process, they will see that there are times when they want to revisit a step to make their writing stronger. For example, while students are editing, they might recognize that there is something that they want to go back and revise. This is a normal part of being a writer and I think it shows that the student is placing value on clearly communicating their writing idea.

Keep it going!

Once you have shared the writing process steps with the students be sure to have them on display so your students can refer to them throughout the school year.

Happy Writing!

Sonia

P.S. Below are free downloads of a mini poster of The Writing Process and a Writing Process Checklist that can be used in your classroom. Students can check off and fiil in the blanks on the checklist to help them stay focused and on target as they write.

The-Writing-Process-checklist-for-studentsDownload
The-Writing-Process-Mini-PosterDownload

Building Elementary Writing Muscles

Personal Narratives, Writer's Notebook, Writing Stamina,
A visual writing prompt.

To help elemenatry students develop their writing muscles, early in the school year I introduce our daily sessions of 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing time. This is a very simple, yet effective strategy that can help students become comfortable with writing. I am all about helping students get over the hump of being reluctant writers! Our uninterrupted writing time leads into our main writing time.

I know that there are students who are already keen writers who will take the initiative to write independently and jump into a writing assignment as soon as it is given. This short burst of writing time is for all students, but especially for those who either struggle with writing, lack writing confidence, or just simply do not enjoy writing.

A visual writing prompt.

For the 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing time, students write on a self-selected topic. Before we start, I will remind them to consult the list of writing ideas that they generated on a previous day. As this is not writing that is intended for grading, students can have fun with it! Now, I have had a student say to me, “I don’t know what to write about!”, even after looking at their list. In response, I would say, they should write that they don’t know what to write about as many times as they can until an idea pops into their head. I know this sounds silly, but I have found that it does work! Students start out thinking it’s funny to write this silly sentence, but it is surprising how an idea will surface.

As students will be writing every day on a self-selected topic, they will either write something new each day or they will continue with a previous piece of writing. Either is fine as the intention is for students to be actively engaged in their writing, to stay focus for 10 uninterrupted writing minutes, and to build their writing muscles.

A visual writing prompt.

In addition to consulting their writing ideas list, a visual prompt could be displayed on a large screen. Students could write about the visual itself, use it for inspiration (Student: That’s interesting, but I’m going to write about . . .), or connect it to a personal experience (Student: Oh, that reminds me of . . .). Students could use the visual prompt or ignore it. The visual prompts in this post are available below.

A visual writing prompt.

Each day that we do 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing, I challenge the students to try and write more than they did the day before. This means, if they wrote 6 lines the previous day, can they double the amount today? (Enlarging the font size does not count!). Usually, students are very keen to rise to this challenge and will stretch themselves. Along with building writing stamina, I want students to aim to extend their writing over time.

Students can do their ten uninterrupted writing minutes in a physical writer’s notebook or an online writer’s notebook. I have found that there are two advantages to having students do this strategy online. First, students get to practice their keyboarding skills in preparation for online high stakes assessments. Second, the teacher can see students work immediately and give timely feedback. The biggest drawback to doing this in Google Docs is that it will auto correct and not give a true picture of how well students can construct sentences and their spelling ability. The auto correct can be turned off, but most students will be able to figure out how to turn it back on. So instead of focusing on sentence structures and spelling, I will focus on what it is students are saying in their writing. Sentence structures and spelling will be addressed later on.

For the 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing time to be successful, there must be a set time for it each day, students must have all their materials ready for writing before the ten minutes, everyone should know the expectations, and everyone should be writing, including the teacher.

After the 10 minutes, I will end the time by asking students if anyone would like to share their writing. I intend this to be a very quick share, so I only choose two or three students. Once a student has shared, I tried to make a short positive comment about something in their writing. When the class is new to the 10 minutes of uninterrupted writing time, I will share my writing first so students can become comfortable with sharing their work. As they develop their writing muscles, they become eager to share!

Happy Writing!

Sonia

P.S. Free downloads of the visual prompts that are in this post.

Staring CatDownload
Footprints-in-snow-1Download
Ice-Cream-Cone-Download
Christmas-TreeDownload