About blah, blah writing 1

                                            1. Prompts for Writing

                                            2. Freewriting session

I have written about and advocated a writing strategy called Quick Write in my classes and in my newsletters for quite a number of years already, but I don’t think it has been consistently implemented anywhere.  Again, the perception seems to be that it is too time consuming although it’s a mere ten minutes and could be done as part of journaling. I’d like to revisit this topic and share how we used this approach in our writing camp recently.

What is Quickwrite/Freewrite?

Quick Write simply is an activity where students are asked to write to a prompt or write about any topic they wish to in a fixed time, say five minutes to begin with, without stopping to correct anything. Sometimes, this is described as stream-of consciousness writing. In other words, just write and do not stop moving your pen for five minutes. If students run out of ideas, they simply write, “I have no ideas. I don’t know what to write” or other similar thoughts going on in their head until they find a new thought to put down on paper.

A timer is an excellent way to keep track of time and once the timer rings, every one stops writing, and they count the number of words on their page and write that at the bottom of their piece. This is optional, but I find that counting the number of words give students incentive to want to write more the next time. After this, the teacher can have students read aloud their own piece or to their friend in the course of which they can edit their writing if they wish to.

Goals of Quick Write

The main goal of Quick Write is to help students develop fluency in writing and to be able to put their thoughts down on paper.  Many students have problems putting their thoughts down on paper because they consistently do self censoring as they write. Others are hampered by a need to get everything correct at the first try or they are paralysed by their inability to spell or to find the right word.

With Quick Write, students write without paying attention to such concerns. They merely put down what comes to their mind even if these thoughts are about their difficulties with writing.  Eventually, they will find that find it easier to put their words down on paper and their writing will increase in length.  I did Quick Write for a short while with Junior when he was in primary school and he enjoyed it and was able to write more after a while. He also became more alert to his own mistakes when writing.

Quick Write vs Freewriting

I am bringing back this topic simply because we had a chance in the Bay Area Writing Project’s (BAWP) Writing Camp to practise this with our students for four days in a row. In our camp, the teachers refer to it as Freewriting but the concept is the same.  This is how Peter Elbow, writing guru and professor of English defines Freewriting:

To write and not stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out, to wonder how to spell something, to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing (quoted in Wendy Major, 22 Oct 1994).

Freewriting gives students an opportunity to write about what they want without worrying about accuracy, relevance, organisation, style, grammar tec. They just focus on writing.

Freewriting at the BAWP writing camp

So, how did this work out in our BAWP camp with our 10-12 year olds?

Students came in each morning to two or three prompts written on the board. They take out their writing journal and begin writing immediately without talking. On the first day, we had students who were a bit lost. They sat and stared into space or at their brand new journals for a long time not knowing what to write. They were then introduced to the concept of blah blah writing. They were told that if they had nothing to write, they could just write blah blah blah, but in between they may overhear something or think of a word, a phrase or even a sentence. They are to include this into their writing and continue.  But they are not to stop writing.

 After the first day, all students knew what to do and fell into the routine without any hassle. They all wrote for 10 minutes after which they put away their journal to begin the first activity of the day. Sometime later during writers’ workshop, they can go back to work on their Freewrite piece if that’s what they want to do or they can go on to write  a new piece introduced by the teacher.

In the next posting, I will share an example of a child experiencing freewriting.