Friday Fun Free Write

So today I'm going to share a simple, simple "fun" technique/event to get your kids writing...I call it "Friday Fun Free Write" Don't know about you all but here in KY there is a push for student growth goals.

This is where the teachers set a standard goal for the whole class, takes pre-data through various tasks, work on teaching the goal, the students do samples tackling the goal, the teachers take those samples, charts evidence, evaluate if the students "met" the goal, and then go back and offer interventions.

Now, no offense against SGG and the "highers" that need to see this data in our yearly summative evaluation...but...isn't that the whole point of TEACHING and what we are doing EVERYDAY?

Everyday, we have a goal! We teach the content. We work towards the goal. And then we evaluate whether the kids met it or not. If not, we go back & try again. Teaching Purpose in a Paragraph!

Well, anyways, I digress. Every year I focus on "writing" as my goal. Why writing? My thought process is...if the kids can put it together on paper with a bit of a time increase and patience, they could "probably" verbally speak it. Writing is a great way to "combine the masses"....the masses of content and grammatical info we must teach. It's also their personality, their thoughts, their interest, and their words. I always say I can figure out a student's personality by reading their papers. For example, I have a student who loves food. If I want him to write...I tell him to write about "food prompts" He especially loves to write about "queso"????

So on I saw on Pinterest several pins of "Flashlight Friday." This is a really neat idea that is being done at the elementary level but can totally can be transformed into high school level. I love seeing my kids break down the barriers of pressures of writing in Spanish.

THEY LOVED IT!!!!!!!! The 20 minutes were up & they wanted to keep going! I was blown away! Fine, sure, okay! :)

I am now making "Friday Fun Free Write" a Friday routine. I honestly did NOT check every SINGLE word on their writings. I glanced through them, made a few minimal corrections, and moved on.

Here is a sample of a student's free write. 

I made sure to tell them I DID NOT check every word, or else I would probably never get their papers back to grown off of. I wanted to focus on one or two errors and let them expand from there.

Friday already has a perfect atmosphere to do this. Feel free to try it in your class. I would love to hear how it went.

Also, my kiddos forgot their blankets and pillows on the first day of doing it, and said they were definitely going to bring them on Friday.

I know this is lame but I actually think the kids just enjoy the "quiet, no talking, no pressure" opportunity!

God Bless & I would love to hear how it goes in your own classroom!!!

Britt B.