I've been teaching timed writing for years now. It's a foundational class designed to help students brainstorm, plan and write assignments under time constraints. As a student, I always found this difficult. Given a writing assignment for homework, I would take as long as 10 hours to produce a 1-page response. Given 30 minutes to do it in class, I panicked. I knew my in-class writings were subpar, and my low confidence about them didn't help. Having heard from many students who feel the same, I created this class, in which we tackle everything from 5-minute quick responses or short answers all the way up to 50-minute essays.
This semester, for the first time ever, I have a class of all girls, many of whom are familiar to me from taking my classes in the past. I have therefore made it a SPECIAL GIRL POWER EDITION of timed writing! It's all about what girls think about, what girls notice, what girls are interested in, how girls move in their worlds. I, myself, saw it as an inspiration for a whole new set of timed writing lesson plans. For the students, however, the reason I like this theme is because I'm hoping it carries with it the sense of openness I want them to approach their writing with. The group is a touchstone from which to draw confidence. Plus, they'll learn from each other's perspectives, and through the process of examining their own, on paper.
In today's class, we'll be examining Material Girl, by Madonna. We'll be talking about the fun word play she uses in the song (puns and idioms! punning idioms!), and writing about what girls need to be happy. I'm not sure where this discussion will go, but I'm excited to find out!
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