8/14/2019 Kim Blevins Free Writing Best Practice

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Best practice - Kim Blevins

Freewriting: Every Class, Every Subject, Great Results

The background

I attended the Summer Institute of the Ozarks Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project,

in summer 2009 with teachers from varying disciplines and age groups. During the institute we freewroteevery day, 15 minutes in the morning and an hour on most evenings. It felt very awkward at first and I

didn’t see the point to it. However, after continuing to do it I began to see that my critical thinking skills

improved simply because I was writing about what I was thinking. One of our participants did his demo on

the value of freewriting and I am sold on it because I have experienced the benefits myself.

Writing to improve critical thinking skills can be used across the curriculum. It can be used at the beginningof the hour to settle students and help them focus, in the middle of class to ask questions and clarify their 

learning so far, or at the end of the hour to evaluate and solidify the lesson.

What exactly is freewriting?

In its true form, freewriting is writing nonstop for 5-10 minutes. The writer is to write whatever comes to

mind. A conscious flow of thoughts is systematically put on the paper. The only rules are: the writer must

not stop, they must not worry about grammar or correctness, and they must not cross things out. If the

writer cannot think of anything to write, they can write “I can’t think of anything to write.” The basic ideais to write nonstop.

What is the research that supports freewriting?

“One of the benefits of ten minutes of unfocused freewriting, then, is that it gives students the opportunity

to use written language just as it should be used: to make mearning by organizing and classifying

observations and drawing conclusions about the world. However, to be more accurate, it is not the world

about which students in my samples of freewriting were making meaning, but their world, more

specifically, themselves. For ten minutes every class period, twenty minutes every week, five hours everysemester, I give my students classroom time to write about what amuses, interests, annoys, or depresses

them.”

Sheryl I. Fontaine Recording and Transforming: The Mystery of the Ten-Minute Freewrite

“The idea is to get used to putting our thoughts down on paper unencumbered by any critical

straightjackets. We don’t have to worry about the constraints of form (writing an essay) or reaching an

audience (writing for a grade). Continued practice in this type of writing helps us get down what we mean

more easily. Also, you will find this kind of freewriting leads you to dialogue with yourself-- to consider,evaluate, reflect upon what you think, feel, or experience. The “meta-discourse” is extremely valuable in

the development of your thinking--which leads to the real hidden value of freewriting: it develops your 

thinking and “good thinking is the root of good writing.” Lennie Irvin

How does this work in classrooms other than language arts?

This technique works in all classes. It is about thinking with your writing. Teachers could give students a

short time of freewriting at the beginning of their classes to get them ready for the day or a short time at theend to reflect on what they learned.

Another technique is a focused freewrite where the teacher asks the student to focus on a certain topic and

write for so many minutes. This technique

Example: A science or math journal- New concept: Teachers ask students to freewrite about the unit before

they begin. Students write for 6-8 minutes about their prior knowledge, share with a partner near them, then

the teacher asks volunteers to share a sentence or two to the whole group. The teacher uses this as a

springboard for the lesson that day.