As a result of the needs of the first group of students, I trialled something new. After talking to students about the topic for writing, I gave them two minutes to write down as much as they could remember from what had been talked about on the topic. Interestingly, I had at least two sentences from every student who took part! In some cases, this was more then I would get in a whole writing session. Some students saw the activity as a competition to write as much as they could down. Others found it useful to be given a personal goal within a smaller time frame. Several students were quite amazed when they came to the realisation that they had written so much in such a short time frame. They were even more amazed when they compared this to the amount they had previously been writing during a whole lesson. Taking part in this speed reading activity helped them to realise just how capable they were at writing. As a result of this, I will give some students tighter time limits and goals in writing and clearer expectations of what I expect in each of these smaller time frames. I will see how this goes!
I plan to continue both of these ideas for writing into term 4.