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Richard Day, in his article “Two Writing Activities for Extensive Reading,” says that having students extend the free writing to a slightly more advanced timed repeated thinking and writing provides three benefits. Students can have a starting place for their writing, they improve their writing fluency, and the instructor has a better insight to the students’ reading. Imagine having your students write for a few minutes each day about what they read or what they heard during the last class period. It would be easy to find out if they are keeping up with the class. As Day says, “If they have not read a book, they will have little, if anything, to write about.” This is equally true for those who haven’t attended class, or have not paid attention.
Focused free writing is probably more beneficial for most courses, but if you’d like to try free writing that isn’t focused on your course topic, go to Creative Writing Prompts, where 346 topics are ready for your use. If you are in a computer room and want to control the free writing time, you might want to have students use this site to write their ideas.
While most instructors don’t have the time to free write in every class, adding this to your class activities would be useful to students. Focused topics could help students think about what is discussed in class, and could help them on their exams. As you’re planning next semester’s classes, think about adding this beneficial activity.
Note: Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no blog entry next week. See you in December!
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