Write as Well as you can as fast as you Can for 3 Minutes
Objective: Students will practice producing writing
Grade Level: 1st
Activity:
1.) Students will raise their hand and volunteer two different words (without knowing they will write about one of them)
2.) Once two words are picked out, the teacher will explain that the students will be choosing ONE of the words to write about for 3 minutes
3.) Have students pick one words, showing they have picked a word by giving a thumbs up
4.) Once all students have a words give them 30 seconds to think about what they will want to write about
a. Set a timer to be sure to give students time to think
5.) Once the timer goes off for think time, allow students to pick up their pencils
6.) On your mark, get set, write!--- for 3 minutes, setting the timer again
7.) When the timer goes off tell the students to left their pencils and count their words
8.) Write the amount of words completed under writing
9.) Have two different students pick two new words and start the process over
10.) Students can compare their writing to see if they can get more words each time
Differentiation:
Some students may feel like they do not know what to write. You may need to help these students get started by having sentence starters. This might be a good place to start for all students the first couple of times this activity is done. You can brain storm some sentence starts as a class. Eventually though you would want students to write all on their own.
Students, who cannot write for different reasons, may be able to tell their story and have the other person write it down. For example an aide, parent helper, or the teacher may help listen and write for the student. If an aid or parent helper is not available students may want to write for each other as an exercise. Another option might be to allow the student to tell the story into a tape recorder.
Extension:
This activity is nice because students at every age level may do this activity. The time can be altered as well as the topic. One idea that I like is having students do one of these quick writes at the beginning and end of a unit. At the beginning the students could tell you what they know already about the topic, and at the end they can write what they learned or any questions. This is a good quick way to get an idea of where your class stands in understanding a topic.
I really love your extension idea! This could easily be intergrated into my science class. We started a unit on magnets and electricity, I will have them power write about it tomorrow. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI did this with my students but we were practicing introductions. We wrote 3 times, one mintue each, after a one minute "think". Each write was on the same topic, but they had to use a different introduction each time. After three pieces were written, they were to read back over each write and pick their favorite introduction. We did a whip around and the kids read their favorite piece.It was interesting as I read all the pieces to see the development of the introduction each with each write. More often then not, the last write thad the best written introduction.
ReplyDeleteI love this! I did this activity with fourth graders that I subbed for a couple of weeks ago and they had so much fun doing it. They were begging to do more! This could be used for literally any subject to get the brain rolling.
ReplyDelete