In each class you will find Quick Write journals and on most days you can find our students enthusiastically recording a great new idea down or practicing a new writing technique that is being explicitly taught in the writing lessons.  

So what are Quick Writes? Quick Writes are short 2-5 minute lightening writes prompted by a word, an image, an idea, an author technique, a possibility. The function of Quick Writes is to limit the time for writing to free the mind from thinking that it cannot 'do'. Once we get out of our own way, we are free to explore new territories, thoughts and ideas that can be otherwise halted by what every writers knows as 'writer's block'. We overthink it. Quick Writes give us no time to think, other than on what the prompt forces us to think about. 

Quick Writes:  

• excite students 
• draw on and develop imaginations 
• free up the writer to write 
• live alongside a rich and extensive read aloud program 
• develop an awareness of the rich techniques that writers use 
• increase opportunity for volume of writing
• undoubtedly improves the quality of writing

Examples of Quick Write:

Mel Steele
Leader of Learning