Last semester, I observed an eighth grade English teacher who implemented what he called Daily Writings into his daily curriculum. I really liked the idea of them and wanted to share the idea as well as expand upon them a bit. The idea of a daily writing was to have students write for a solid five minutes every single day before the lesson began and then students were encouraged to share their pieces if they chose to. Students were allowed to opt out of sharing if they felt their piece was too personal or otherwise chose not to want to share it. The inspiration for the writings were usually a short prompt, written or oral, or sometimes merely a single word. Students could respond to the prompt as best as they could, or, if they prompt did not move them or they had a more pressing topic in mind that they wished to write on, they could write on another topic.
The idea of Daily Writings were to get students more comfortable with writing and doing so with less restraint. This proved to work well. Student pieces grew lengthier and more detailed as the year progressed. Also, it encouraged students to make writing a public, interactive art. As the year progressed, more and more students chose to read their writings aloud to the class.
I really liked this idea, as I said before. I loved the results of it. It made writing a regular, important part of every single class and made students comfortable and confident in sharing what they had to say via writing. I, also, see more potential with the prompts for these writings. Since these writings are so freely open, I see them being a good opener for teaching different styles of writing. For example, before a lesson on persuasive writing the prompt for a Daily Writing could be something on the lines of "Write a sales pitch for an imaginary product." The prompt could also be a picture, short video clip, or music. Daily Writings have so much potential.
I really like this idea, I have actually heard of this before, but it had a different name to it. I think this is a great idea, it gives the students a chance to reflect on whatever they want to reflect on. I think of it as a way for students to vent without it being aloud, unless they felt the need to share it to the class. Thank you for mentioning this, I think it is a great idea, not only for an English classroom but can also be done in other classes as well. This is also something I am willing to try with my students one day.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually doing this right now in my College Writing class, and I've already thought of putting something akin to it in my writing plan. The way my professor does it, he gives a prompt and the class has to write for five minutes straight. Even if you run out of ideas, he insists that you keep writing. I feel like this is a way to have the students get used to writing, in a way that makes it both easy and second nature.
ReplyDeleteThis goes to show that practice makes perfect. I've had teachers in high school who tried this with us and I saw it in during my field experience at slippery rock high school. It is something that I would like to try out myself once I start student teaching next semester, except I think I might try to tailor the topics or words to whatever the subject of the lesson is of that day. I was also thinking that when doing one word prompts maybe to use a vocab word that has not been covered because vocabulary doesn't go away at the high school level, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI really like your vocab word idea. I think that's a good way of pushing kids to try and figure out what words mean on their own. It's a good mental exercise as well as a miniature lesson in prefixes, suffixes, base words, etc. Nice idea.
DeleteI really do like this idea, especially since it breaks away from the cliche of keeping a journal (which is nice and could be personal, but is SO overused). This is also an idea can be changed to however you want it to be. Another plus is that they could be easy to grade, you could just say that if the student writes something sensible, they get a point, if not then a zero.
ReplyDelete