I had a conversation with a colleague about improving my students’ writing stamina while still making writing fun for them. I was discouraged by the fact that students didn’t often think that my prompts were as fun to complete. To make matters worse, I sat through a professional development meeting where the speaker pushed the idea that our students need to be writing and writing often.

Enough!

I get it!

But how do I get them to write and have fun while writing?

This deep dark journey led me down the Google rabbit hole. I needed to find something that my students would want to write about. It had to be fun. Funny. Quick to do. Something that required little brain activity, but it needed to keep them engaged the entire time.

What I found was John Spencer. He actually has a YouTube channel with a playlist of Writing Prompts that I love! These little videos that describe the writing prompt are fun and engaging. Plus, I can embed them easily into Schoology assignments.

As I stated in an earlier post, we have PBIS Extra Recess Fridays every other week. Our class schedule is shortened due to the schedule and instead of trying to cover a mini-lesson that may or may not be mini enough, and then allow sufficient time for the students work, and then allow for Independent Reading, I decided to give this a try.

The first writing prompt that I started with was creating a to do list for a villain. I thought that if it didn’t work, we wouldn’t do this again. I have never seen kids so engaged in writing. It was bulleted. I created a daily agenda sheet with times on it, and they filled in the blanks beside the times. When asked if they would want to do other similar writing tasks it was a unanimous yes. Who knew?

Seriously, though. Go check out John Spencer’s blog and his YouTube channel. It has a lot of great resources for teachers.

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