Power Writing

Daily writing has been one of the staples of my classroom for the last couple of years, but sometimes I need to mix things up just to keep the kids (and me) interested. One thing my students have really enjoyed is Power Writing. I got this idea from Jeff Anderson’s book 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know, which you can preview online. 

Power Writing consists of giving kids a pair of words (like duck and pickle), telling kids they have to use at least one of the words in their writing, and then setting the timer for one minute. The kids have to write as many words in one minute as they can. They need to be in sentences, but that’s about all I require. After the timer goes off, the kids stop writing and draw a line underneath what they have written. Then they count up their words. On the white board, I draw a chart with three columns and ten rows.  The rows are labeled 0-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on (see picture below).  I stop at 91-100 because that’s virtually impossible to do, but maybe it will inspire someone. I ask the kids to raise their hand when we get to the number of words they wrote in a minute. I mark those on the chart, and then put up two new words.

This is repeated three times, and sometimes I have the kids add up all of their words just to see what they can do in three minutes. Some students who struggle with the daily five minute writing find they often write quite a few words during Power Writing, but students who are just slow writers, even when they're inspired, sometimes don't like the speed aspect, and I will give them a choice to just write freely instead of do Power Writing. Anderson suggests doing this several times a week to build writing fluency, but I find that it works better for me if it is once a week or once every two weeks. It takes longer than my regular daily writing, so it’s easier if it is a special thing we do. 

You could easily use words tied to curriculum content, but I find that since this is the first thing we do in our day, silly words are more fun to write about. I like anything goofy sounding, like "gargle", or strange animal words like "platypus." Some body part words are funny, like "nostril", but you'll want to be kind of careful about some other ones. And finally, at least in my fourth grade classes, any words that indicate that something could explode have been VERY popular. Play around with Power Writing and see if you notice more fluency in your writers!