All good teachers have at least a few exercises they use year after year because they never, ever fail. Good teachers also share. You’ll find three new teacher-tested writing exercises in this spot every month. They will meet the K-12 ELA benchmarks that address writing, and will be adaptable for any age. If you have favorite tried-and-true writing exercises you’d to share, email them to our Education Outreach Director Lyn Jones at lynjones@indianawriters.org.
See previous months' exercises in our Exercise
Archive.
Writing About Writing
What we often forget as teachers of writing is that we are good writers
and we love it. Our students come to us with years of positive
and negative feelings about writing. A great kick-off for the
school year, this exercise allows you to better understand who they are
as writers and help them to grow into the writers you know they can
be. Ask students to write about their writing memories.
First, see our no-fail “I Remember” exercise below, which is adaptable
for a multitude of assignments, including this one.
Then. Ask your students to make an “I remember” list of 8-10
strong memories about writing. These may include everything from
their earliest memories of making letters to writing down words to
shaping essays. Memories of teachers who made an impact on their
writing lives for better or worse, writing their first poem or story,
or assignments they loved or struggled may also come to mind. Ask
them to replace names or not use names of teachers.
Ask them to choose one memory to develop and repeat the “I
Remember.” (It should be one with strong visual quality.)
Then they should repeat the “I Remember” exercise, focusing on that one
memory. After they have a list of 8-10 memories, they may start
free-writing the scene, which will give them a first draft of a
personal narrative
The exercise may be expanded into a personal essay about their writing
lives, fulfilling the autobiography component of the Indiana English
Language Arts state standards. As well, you can allow students to
write their memory as a poem, as a visual narrative, or even as a
script! That’s the beauty of memoir and of this exercise—it
crosses genre.
I Remember…
List and don’t think. Don’t even raise your fingers from the
keyboard or pencil from the paper. Just write down everything you
remember repeating the phrase “I remember” each time.
I remember…
I remember…
I remember…
Write down everything and anything you remember about writing- from
learning to write until last year in school! A sentence will do for
most memories; at most, write a few. Don’t think sequentially
just randomly.
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