One of our new members, Polly Fuller, has a question about Free Writes. I think it would help a lot of the newer teachers to be able to read some comments from experienced teachers on this excellent winter activity, when we just don’t feel like teaching and want our students to just be quiet for awhile:
Ben,
I am going to start doing free writes as I just started TPRS this semester and with all of our snow/cold days we’ve yet to have a full week of school since Christmas break. Anyway…what is a reasonable goal in terms of word count for levels I and II? Also, how long do they write during these free writes and do they write whatever they want or do you have them retell the story for the week.
Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks much.
Polly
My response:
Ten minutes is pretty much the gold standard on free writes. I’m not a big word count person, but others are and I am sure we will get good feedback from other teachers on the question of word counts and bar graphing and all that.
I used to have the kids make bar graphs indicating how many words they wrote on a particular day, for example, in October, and then each month they would chart their increased growth in terms of word count, or maybe twice a month. I don’t really do that anymore, however, but for those teachers who have parents who like to see samples of their kids work it can be pretty impressive to see the progress charted over about six months. It would not be too late to start graphing word counts right now – you’d still have something to show parents at the end of the year.
What is crucial about free writes is that they not be graded or looked upon in any kind of assessment way. In that interest, we have had for years and years now this poster to instruct the students on how the process works:
https://benslavic.com/Posters/free-write-rules.pdf