Lesson for Wednesday

Goals for the lesson.
I want students to generate a lot of ideas quickly, especially in the early stages of their writing.
The lesson includes a handout about generating ideas. I will focus on the private freewriting as warm-up, the public freewrite (share without response or share and respond without criticism or evaluation, and the collaborative freewrite. Over the weekend, students could try the other ways to generate ideas and then do a "quick and dirty" writing--a collage. In a collage, they will pick the best parts from the writing they have done and patch it together. They don't need transitions--this is more like a collection of ideas. They will have met the goal of putting a lot of words down on paper and thinking about how they can relate their own experiences to what they have been reading. These informal writings could be used for a more formal writing later.

The reason why it is important to distinguish between private and public is because it gives students a comfort level as they write. We write differently when we know we have to read it aloud. I think this is a nice cushion that lets the students know that you won't surprise them. I find that after having introduced this that students will ask me--is this private or public?--if I forget to mention it. I also think that this satisfies the requirement that we teach them that there are different audiences and purposes for writing.

So this is my plan:
private freewriting--what that means--a warm-up for a few minutes
public focused freewriting--what that means and give them the prompt
collaborative writing--with a prompt
hand out the collage assignment--due on Monday--show class some samples--the topic I used was writing or writer and the collage showed a picture of them as a writer--the topic for these writings with be about education--the autobiography of your education--power structures and hierarchies in classroom where you have been a student--maybe discussions about grades and their place as discipline in a classroom.