Writing Rituals for the New Year
Archives, August - September, 2000

As the new school year dawns each teacher has a chance to institute certain rituals which can aid instruction all year long. Many of these rituals can include, writing, thinking, speaking, , etc. I’m listing six of my favorites and encourage you to send us some of your own to share with others by clicking HERE.   These writing rituals seem to apply at all grade levels in their own way so I have chosen not to limit them to one particular grade and let you decide how they might work for your students.

 Letter from the Teacher

Write a letter to your students about what you are thinking, reading, questioning. Be sincere and direct and discuss your opinions with them. Ask them questions that have no answer.

Photocopy the letter for your class the first week of school and ask them to write a letter back to you. Read all their responses and write them back one letter that takes in many of their responses. Repeat the process. By May you will have a mile high correspondence with your class and you should be able to excerpt interesting quotes from your students letters and your own.

This would be a marvelous way to write a book. Call it Letters to My Class.

 Story Circle

This is still one of my favorite listening rituals. Students sit in a circle on the floor with the teacher and we all either tell a story or read something we have written. Create a class talking stick that can be passed around and used all year long . The rule is only the person with the stick can talk. We all listen or write questions on scraps of paper or ask them out loud after the speaker talks. As a teacher you can write down some of these oral questions and suggest students use them as fuel for revision.

Press Conference

The Student stands at the podium and speaks for several minutes while others listen to the story or original research they have collected. The rest of the class asks questions that you can write down for the speaker. Stress the power of the follow-up question and suggest that students learn to follow up each other’s questions. Press conferences are a great way to share research or learn about our expertise.

 Passing Notes ----the Write Around

This one fulfills the primordial need to get mail which we all share. After a lesson or an experience or just for fun, have students sit in groups of 4 with a blank piece of paper. Get a time and and set it for five minutes. Ask students to write a note about the subject at hand. Raise questions in your note, and explore ideas. Tell your students to write fast but legible enough to read. After 5 minutes they pass their note and their neighbor reads it. Ask them to read the note and respond to the note in any way they want to. Address idea, try to answer questions, write new thoughts etc. After five minutes pass the note again and respond to the 2 notes as though you have approached these 2 people on a street corner and are responding to their conversation. Repeat the process a third time then pass the note back to the original note writer. Read it and share the interesting thoughts, questions or insights which have emerged.

This is a wonderful way of exploring solutions to tough problems.

 Pencils Up The Quick Write (this version learned from Geoff Hewitt)

Bring in a timer and set it somewhere in the class. Explain the quick write to your students. It may sound something like this.

Sometimes it fun to write at the speed of thought.

Hold up your pencils and when I say go we are all going to write for seven minutes without stopping. If you get stuck, write your thoughts and see if they don’t lead you to a new idea or insight. When we are done the timer will ring.

After you are done put a star or a check mark beside writing that surprised you. or intrigued you.

 Show and Tell

Everyone brings in something special to share with classmates. Before any sharing occurs we all write about our special things. Share writing and the object.

 Talk for a few minutes about the thing then.