This week, a question was posed on Edutopia about the idea of using Sustained Silent Writing during your English classes to take a closer look at students' writing needs. I thought this was a fantastic idea. I used to do this with my second graders. I would show them a picture and then prompt them to write about some related topic. It was one way to get the kids' pencils moving. I was able to see which kids were immediately stuck with the ideas at hand. I could see which students would write the bare minimum, and I could see which students were fully confident in their abilities. This is something I have stepped away from since I moved up to the third grade this year, but I think I will very quickly weave this back into my instructional schedule.
After have the students write for 8-10 minutes, I then share all of the anonymous stories with the class and we make corrections to the stories that we read. The children enjoy hearing their stories read aloud, and they find it helpful to see which corrections are made. It is my hope that the students will learn and grow from this type of an activity and I will work this into my lesson plans right away!
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