But I Don’t Have Time for Writing!: 4 Time Saving Tips
Time does not seem to be on a teacher’s side. Not only are the days filled with OH SO MANY things to do with students that are in you daily plan, but then there are the out-of-your-control additional items and events that throw your plan out the window. (Don’t you just want to turn off your classroom phone or walkie-talkie?!) There just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything completed and feel like your work is done. I have often witnessed that the schedule teachers are given just plain doesn’t work well, and not just for writing.
The issue of time is bad news for writing since it has been pushed aside and set on the back burner in classrooms across the country for years. I don’t blame you, dear teacher! Writing has been getting a bad rap due to lack of the understanding of it’s important and value, lack of instruction on the topic of writing in pre-service programs, lack of effective and on-going training, the list goes on and on. Even if you know you’d like to do more writing in your classroom, however, the time crunch is getting in your way.
The four tips I am sharing in this post have been effective in the many classrooms I have supported, as well as in my own. Some may find them insignificant, but every second counts when it comes to teaching, and little changes go a long way. Not only that, but often the little changes are the only ones you are ready and able to try, so why not give them whirl?!
Let me put some purpose behind the need to have time for writing.
“Nearly one third of high school graduates are not ready for college-level English composition courses” (ACT,2005).
“About half of private employers and more than 60% of state government employers say writing skills impact promotion decisions” (National Commission on Writing, 2004, 2005).
“Students’ reading comprehension is improved by having them increase how often they produce their own texts.” (Graham and Hebert, 2010)
“The act of writing is an act of thought….Writing is not superficial to the intellectual life but central to it; writing is one of the most disciplined ways of making meaning and one of the most effective methods we can use to monitor our own thinking” (Murray 2004).
These statements are enough to persuade anyone that writing is an essential component of education, but additionally, when students are able to experience true writing in the classroom and collaborate with peers and teachers on their writing, they not only produce amazing pieces, but they learn so very much about writing, reading and more.
But even more importantly, or just plain more appealing to me and possibly to you, when you provide time to for students to write, really write in authentic ways and in a variety of styles and genres, it will be fun, and exciting, and inspirational, for you and for your students.
So, how much time are we talkin’?
First let me say that student writing can and should be done in many ways across the day and school year. Writing activities can vary from short to long, quick writes to processed pieces, responses to reading (short or long), summaries of learning or portions of texts, and on and on. For our purposes today however, I am speaking more of sustained writing time for students anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes at a time. These blocks of time vary across grade levels and increase within each grade level throughout the year. (Kinder teachers, do not fear-I do not expect them to all write for 45 minutes! But…many of them can!) There have been dozens of times I have seen classrooms of students as young as kindergarten, when taking part in authentic writing time, engage for more than 10 minutes on the first day, and students in upper grades for as long as 25 (again, on the first day).
Although in past years I have heard from several experts in the field that this time for writing should occur every day, I have recently heard Lucy Calkins advise that IF you are not able to fit that writing time into your schedule, it is better to have 3 days of the desired block of writing time than 5 days of only a few minutes. Quality and quantity should win over frequency.
If this amount of time sound scary to you, or unachievable, have no fear! First, the time can build and start as short as you need it to from the beginning. Second, you are about to learn a few tips to help you fit that time into your schedule!
Suggestion # 1 Consider the purpose…for everything!
There are things that happen in classrooms for many reasons, and sometimes those reasons are just not good enough to keep doing them. I remember giving my students a morning work activity that was given to me by a veteran teacher my first year, and one day realizing that it was completely unnecessary and basically wasting their time. I had used it because I needed something that year and never even gave it much thought. A teacher I had been coaching was having her first graders do a brain break video every day at 1:30 just as they had been all year, even though her schedule had recently changed and now that brain break was right after her center time when students were moving around the room. We realized it was no longer needed at that time, which freed her schedule up a bit more.
It is helpful to every so often take some time to think through your daily or weekly activities and consider their purpose. Examine whether the things you are fitting into your schedule are serving the purpose intended and that the purpose is helping your students in some way. As we know, this time is valuable, and we do not want any second to go to waste. (Yes, I know. Sometimes that brain break is for us!)
Suggestion #2 Clean up Routines
Even the best of us often get to a time in the school year where we may have loosened the reigns a bit and/or our students have gotten a little more relaxed (such a nice way to say it, right?) and our transitions or line up procedures and such can start to get a little messy. Perhaps it is taking a bit too long for students to get into line, switch from one center or subject to another or clean up after an activity. For me, any time I was not quite as prepared as I could have been, I see those minutes just slipping away from me as I gathered materials or started to make that anchor chart right before my mini-lesson.
These examples are why it is always a good idea to take a look at your routines and procedures and see where you may need to reteach, plan ahead or even change up a few things to make them more efficient. The time it takes to do so will save quite enough time in the future to make it worth it, and I know you will feel better and more effective when everything is running smoothly!
Suggestion #3 Keep the Mini-lessons Mini!
Unless this is something you have already considered or had coaching on, I would make a bet that sometimes, SOMEtimes, you may talk a bit too much during your lesson. I know I have been oh so guilty of this over the years and I have witnessed oh so many teachers being guilty of this as well. It is very easy to get caught up in your thoughts or ideas or be convinced that if you just add one more thing, they will get it!
The truth is, talking your teaching point to death does not do your students any good. Even when we are presenting more of an inquiry or immersion activity, it is best to allow more talking and thinking time for students then for yourself. When it comes to a mini-lesson, which is a short, focused lesson with four components, best practice is completing the lesson within ten minutes. As you know, students’ attention spans are quite short-no more than 15 minutes in 6th-8th grade and no more than 5 minutes in kindergarten- so 10 minutes is actually quite long for most students. (I do tend to REALLY shorten the mini-lesson in kindergarten!) We also know that we want students to be doing the work of writers, so the time we are talking is taking away from their valuable time to write!
The keys to keeping the lesson short include a combination of specificity, purpose, and routine. Even if you do not follow the specific structure of a mini-lesson (Connection, Teaching, Active Engagement, Link) you can use a structure that will keep you focused and on point so your talking time will be kept to a minimum. When you use the same format for each lesson you teach, you will have a flow that keeps you on track. When teaching a mini-lesson, you should be teaching ONE specific strategy, not going over multiple strategies at once. Choose the one thing you will be teaching and create the rest of the lesson around that point. It is also extremely helpful to use the same or similar wording for each portion of your lesson because you will more easily move from one portion to the next. An added bonus is that the common language helps students to follow along more closely, as they will be aware of how the lesson flows.
Suggestion #4 Connect Reading and Writing
Literacy includes reading AND writing in various contexts and formats, but for some reason they have become two separate subjects in most curriculums and classrooms. I did not realize how well reading and writing go together in the classroom until I began using the Units of Study in my second-grade class, and that wasn’t until my 8th year of teaching. While using those lessons and hearing what it really is to write, not just to assign writing to students or to guide them in the same writing piece, I began to think about how writers write the books we read and that is how simple it is, and how necessary, to connect the two when teaching reading and writing. Unfortunately, I still see reading and writing as completely separate entities in classrooms I visit today.
Luckily, it is not as difficult as you may think to connect reading and writing for your students, and the more it can be accomplished, the more time you save. I’ll start with a few simple ways to make this happen. The first relates to what I mentioned above. Simply telling your students that authors write what we read will connect reading and writing in a basic way. You can build on that by mentioning writing when teaching reading and mentioning reading when teaching writing. This one may not save too much time, but it does help make the learning being done to be more concrete. The second practice is to utilize a read-aloud book you have already read to students as a mentor text for writing. You will save time since you have already read the book, but you will also see how seamlessly you will begin to be able to speak to both reading and writing while using the book. Let’s say you have used the book Those Shoes to discuss character development in reading. You could A-use it for any writing strategy the book may demonstrate and speak the to the fact that when you first read the book, they read it as a reader, but now they are reading it as a writer or B-make that specific connection to your previous lessons and use the book to teach how a writer develops characters through something like dialogue or actions of the character.
A BIG time-saver comes in a bigger package and should be considered only if it can be effectively and authentically accomplished. This is the idea of combining reading and writing instruction entirely. Ellen Oliver Keene introduces the concept of the Literacy Studio in her book with the same name, and Michelle Ruhe of Coach from the Coach shares a similar and very practical version of literacy integration in her blog post. The idea is that units are comprised of both reading and writing focusing on the same skills and strategies at the same time. Instead of having two separate lessons during two separate blocks within your ELA time, you teach only ONE lesson for both reading and writing. This practice is just so cool and highly valuable for students. It also saves time in big ways by streamlining planning and removing extra transition times.
It’s Time to Make Time for Writing
My advice is to take one or two of these suggestions and give them a try. Keep track of how many minutes you are saving if possible. Then, try another suggestion! Once you see that you have found a good fifteen minutes in your schedule, you are ready to implement some writing time! In the youngest grades, they may only write (as a whole class) for about five to ten minutes for the first few sessions, so that is plenty of time. During this time of independent writing, students should have choice to write whatever they want. It is helpful to share a few ideas of the type of writing they can do. It is also helpful to take time to write while they are writing and then share your writing with the class. Even if you do not have enough time yet to teach a lesson AND have students write independently, at least they are moving their writing muscles a bit during the week.
