Quick Writes - A strategy to teach content writing

If our goal of quick rates is to have students writing a lot writing in formally to get to feel comfortable with it and the other goal of quick writing is to get them to recognize that when we write in school it it we're not just writing for the teacher to get a grade that we really we can use writing to communicate with other people to help us learn so once students have completed a writing a quick write what do we do with them how do we take advantage of them and there are a couple ways that we want to do this one is by focusing on some sort of peer collaboration so and this can happen even as the students are writing the quick write if if we give students say you know five minutes to make a list of you know this topic or that topic or do a brain dump in three minutes of everything you know what we might say is work with a partner quickly get talk about some ideas and then both of you start writing so that collaboration can happen as you're writing the quick write but but once the quick writes are done the collaboration is where kids get to recognize that other people beside the teacher are going to read this so what are some ways that we can do that very simply you can just do a quick pair share so you know the two of you are gonna share read to one another the two of you over here you're gonna read to one one another you could also do it randomly the teacher can collect all of them shuffle them around and if if you want you can say to the students you don't have to put your names on the papers at all so now we distribute them back and I call in a few students to read the quick write that they have everybody all the other students know that it's not theirs but they recognize that at any point the whole audience might hear their piece there's a great little sort of activity game that you can do around this call snowball so the two students take their quick writes yeah take it you know roll it up into a ball everybody throws them up into the air and you know you grab one and you know whoever whatever snowball you end up catching that's the quick read that you know you're gonna write to another partner or to the whole class so that sort of sharing is helpful what about using the quick writes how can the teacher use them as an informal assessment tool simply just collecting all of them and taking some time to read them is let you know what's on the minds of the students so for example this morning when you came in for our training I had you do a quick write and at the very first break while you were off having coffee right I took a few moments to flip through the comments that you made in answer to that first quick write question and I immediately know now what's what's on your mind so you can use them informally that way they're also it's a great way especially if the quick write is an exit ticket out the room for the teacher to take a look at gee what did the kids really understand or remember from the lesson if you're asking them to as their exit ticket jot down what's a question that's still going around in your head that really helps you assess what what you need to do for the next morning when we talk about what do you do with quick writes often the question comes up how do I make kids accountable you know so so some teachers have said things like if the kids don't know it's being graded they just won't do it and I think this is where the the peer comes in your peers hold you accountable so if I know that when I write my quick write I'm gonna have to turn around and give it to a partner or that somebody maybe anonymously will end up seeing my piece and have to read it there that that bit of peer pressure is enough for students to feel comfortable and and to recognize I've got to get something down on paper I think the other thing is to remind them that the whole idea of a quick write is that this isn't something formal so you're not going to be held accountable for things like spelling and conventions and grammar we talked about how some of the quick writes that you would do might not even be full sentences if you're asking kids to fill out a graphic organizer or make a list so letting the kids know that they're not being graded way they would for a really formal piece I think helps get them to use the peer accountability to be willing to write the quick write you know if you feel like you you need some sort of grading what you can do is say to the students I'm not always going to grade your quick writes sometimes I will sometimes I won't the other thing you can do is say you know I'm gonna randomly when we do a quick write I'm gonna pick three quick writes out of the whole class and those are the ones I'm going to grade but none of us know who I'm going to pick before before I start grading the other thing is you know give it more of a kind of a simple grade like a a check plus a check or a check minus that's sort of because I mean it's really hard to give kids a numerical value on something that you're trying to say to them in the first place is just simple writing getting it out on paper so those are a few of the things that you can think about in terms of what do you do with the quick writes once students are finished