On-Demand Writing Time

They’ve collected and collected and collected some more in their writer’s notebooks. Now it’s time for my kids to publish something. I’m giving them two days to do an “on-demand” piece of writing about a small moment in time. Today I had them use post-its to help themselves find some entries they wanted to publish. Then, they met with their writing partners. After that, they came back to the rug, were told they had to create a plan, but needed to use a graphic organizer (e.g., time line, story structure template, or story mountain) to help them develop their entry prior to going onto the yellow drafting paper. Most of students really surprised me and spent the entire period fleshing out their entries by using the story structure template. (This is an organizer that has four boxes that basically help them retell a story using the words first, next, then, and finally.)

Therefore, if even if my students don’t work on anything for their on-demand piece at home tonight, I truly think they’ll be able to publish their writing in the forty-five minutes I’ve allotted for this tomorrow. (I’m saving 15 minutes for a reflection at the end of the period.)

NOTE: I reminded them that revising the entry didn’t mean copying it over. The kids agreed that there’s no point in just doing a sloppy copy and then rewriting it neater. Hence, I’m really looking forward to seeing some real changes from their original entry, which I’ll be photocopying, to what they produce on-demand tomorrow.