Ch. 8 Organize for Daily Writing

When I first read that Don Graves says that if we don't teach writing at least four days a week for forty-five minutes, then we shouldn't teach it at all, I felt a big oops! Although my kids do writing every day, we don't necessarily spend 45 minutes on it. I then stopped to think about all the writing that we may do throughout the day and that could total up to be forty-five minutes. So I'm hoping that small segments of writing throughout the day are effective as well. I do agree that we must value writing time and I'm working to make writing time a higher priority in my teaching. Another topic of this chapter that I found interesting is teaching students how to choose worthwhile topics. So often we are told not to give kids story starters. While I agree that kids should have freedom to pick their own topic, I often find that kids get overwhelmed sometimes if they're not give some choices or direction. I try to find an even balance of giving kids choice and sometimes directing them on a topic or choices of topics. One thing that my students have enjoyed is that they have a list of 100 topic ideas pasted in the cover of their journal. If they are struggling with what to write about they will often times pick one of those topics or springboard off a listed topic to get them started.