FREE TYPING
Back in the days of high school English teaching, I took an idea from a writing teacher who used free writing as a technique. What it involved was having students write for 10 minutes not planning ahead at all. The only rule was that they had to keep writing.
No thinking or organizing--just pushing the pen or pencil across the page. If they couldn't think of anything to write, then they were to write, "I can't think of anything to write," and by the time that sentence was finished, a thought would have popped into their heads.
It was a warm up activity that sometimes generated a good sentence or two, a theme topic, even a well turned phrase. At worst, it allowed them 10 minutes of relative peace from a busy day. It also got the old blood pumping to the hand because in those days, writing was a somewhat physical activity. If you doubt that, then you're too young to remember having to shake your hand violently to awaken it from a cramped slumber.
Writing using word processors certainly made writing easier and easier to grade, but free writing then became free typing or free processing. It lost some of its luster.
Not having the time or space for 10 minutes, I shall attempt my first free composing in several years. You, fortunate reader(s), get to see what's up or what it was somewhat like for students back then.
I'll limit mine to three minutes, so here goes.
Weather, of course, is on my mind. It always is. Balmy without the wind. Now does that make sense? Lip balm. My goodness, I couldn't survive without Banana Boat Chap Stick--I think I probably mixed a consumer product metaphor there. I use it constantly. I suppose I'd have no lips at all if I couldn't use Banana Boat. When I was video taped teaching, I never would have imagined I licked my lips so frequently...OK time's up.
Back in the days of high school English teaching, I took an idea from a writing teacher who used free writing as a technique. What it involved was having students write for 10 minutes not planning ahead at all. The only rule was that they had to keep writing.
No thinking or organizing--just pushing the pen or pencil across the page. If they couldn't think of anything to write, then they were to write, "I can't think of anything to write," and by the time that sentence was finished, a thought would have popped into their heads.
It was a warm up activity that sometimes generated a good sentence or two, a theme topic, even a well turned phrase. At worst, it allowed them 10 minutes of relative peace from a busy day. It also got the old blood pumping to the hand because in those days, writing was a somewhat physical activity. If you doubt that, then you're too young to remember having to shake your hand violently to awaken it from a cramped slumber.
Writing using word processors certainly made writing easier and easier to grade, but free writing then became free typing or free processing. It lost some of its luster.
Not having the time or space for 10 minutes, I shall attempt my first free composing in several years. You, fortunate reader(s), get to see what's up or what it was somewhat like for students back then.
I'll limit mine to three minutes, so here goes.
Weather, of course, is on my mind. It always is. Balmy without the wind. Now does that make sense? Lip balm. My goodness, I couldn't survive without Banana Boat Chap Stick--I think I probably mixed a consumer product metaphor there. I use it constantly. I suppose I'd have no lips at all if I couldn't use Banana Boat. When I was video taped teaching, I never would have imagined I licked my lips so frequently...OK time's up.
That's it. That's what I got overpaid to do. And those are the thought I had for 3 minutes.
Now where I'd go from there would have been for students to select something that they had written and write a brief paper on something in their free writing. For me, I suppose I would have written about my world without chap stick. A short description of dry, cracked lips. Kind of an Edward Scissor Lip.
posted by TQ @ 5:27 AM
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