Writing Fluency

Have you ever had a student that has a topic but no idea what to write?  I have several this year.  It's not that they can't come up with any thing to write about each day.  It's that they don't know how to get started.  I came up with a jar activity to help students with writing fluency (because it's timed), thinking quickly, and making connections.  Students choose a word card from the jar and write it at the top of their paper.  The minute timer is then turned over.  Students have one minute to write as many words as they can that relate to or connect with the chosen word.  I made a graph for students to complete each time they do the jar.

This really encouraged them to try to write more words than the previous time.  So far it's worked very well.  One of my most reluctant writers chose this prompt from my Thanksgiving Writing Prompts Jar, "Pretend you are a pilgrim for a day.  Write a story about it."  She said she didn't know what to write about for her story.  I told her to do a minute writing fluency with the word pilgrim.  She was able to come up with 15 related words.  I then asked her how she could include some of those words into her story.  It was in no time at all that she had written a great story about a day in the life of a pilgrim.  You can check my Writing Fluency Jar out at my TpT store or my TN store.