I'm participating in a group that is reading Write Beside Them by Penny Kittle. We are at the beginning of the book, learning what she does and reading the explanations about why she believes it's important to continue those activities. One activity Kittle strongly recommends within the confines of her writing class is to do a 15 minute quick write every single day. There are a number of reasons, but the strongest is to help students gain writing stamina, to learn that writing habits give experience, to learn that they do have ideas, that with practice (and good teaching), they will learn to write better!
Students do these quick-writes in their writers notebooks, so we in the group thought it would be good to start doing them too, to begin filling our own notebooks with our writing so it will be ready to be a part of our teaching repertoire at the beginning of the school year. One quick-write I've done with my students in the past that has yielded interesting results is to finish the following opening: I approached the exit ramp and slowed...