Freewriting: Exploring Everybody's Favorite Topic

from: Writing Exercises for High School Students

Brief Description
Students experiment with a freewriting exercise.

Objective
To provide students with an opportunity to gain fluency and confidence in written discourse.

Procedures
Introduce students to freewriting by telling them that they do not have to worry about organization and mechanics.

  • When you freewrite, you write as fast as you can, letting words and ideas tumble out of your mind onto the page. Freewriting helps you discover what you know and what you feel. Some freewriting pieces will blossom into more polished pieces of writing; others will just help you clarify your thinking.

Guide your students in a 10-15 minute freewriting exercise by asking them the questions listed below as they write.

  • Do not try to answer all of the questions asked during your freewriting. If you get rolling on something, stay with it. Let your pen or pencil follow your thoughts. Keep writing. Look inside yourself.

1. What special knowledge and abilities do you have?
2. What are some things you know more about than other people do?
3. What are some things about yourself that make you proud?
4. What are some of your hopes for the future?
5. What are some things you hope to know more about?
6. What do you spend most of your non-school time doing?

  • Reread your freewriting piece quietly to yourself. Ask yourself these questions: Does it sound like me talking? Is it truthful? Does it say what I wanted to say?

  • Check carefully for missing words. Fix up any parts which are not clear. Reread your piece again. Mark parts that you think are particularly good. Keep all your writing.

Have students freewrite on a topic and begin a draft. Use freewriting as a way to generate topics. Allow students to interact and to talk informally with one another about their ideas and plans as they begin their drafts.

Results/Benefits
Without requiring the attention that a formal piece of expository writing may require, freewriting exercises promote fluency and confidence in students' writing. The lesson also provides students with experience in the prewriting stage of the writing process.

Source
ED 298 500
Decker, Norma; Shirley, Kathy. "Teaching Writing in the Secondary School: A Research-Based Writing Process Curriculum." 1985. 94 pp.

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