A Marathon

Today we did another marathon.  Do not worry it is not your typical marathon...it is a writing marathon.  We have done one or two writing marathons this year.  I love these little breaks during our weeks to just spend some time and write.  I think the class really likes them as well.  When we got a chance to share our writing from the marathon, almost every hand was in the air wanting to share.  Today's writing marathon was a would you rather marathon.

I asked the class a bunch of would you rather questions like: Would you rather spend the rest of your life in a library, an amusement park, or a zoo?  Would you rather be able to fly or have super speed?  Would you rather give a gift or receive a gift?  Would you rather be the strongest person in the world or the smartest person in the world?  Would you rather live where it is always 110 degrees or always 0 degrees?

The class would pick one of these choices and then they would write.  We would write for about ten minutes and then we would take a break to share our writing.  Then back to our seat for ten more minutes of writing and then some share time.  Then back to our seats for more writing and then some more share time.

The reason I wanted to do this type of writing marathon was it fit perfectly with the cartoons that we had looked at this week.  In the cartoons the author was making a claim.  Today in their writing the students were making a claim.  They were claiming that a zoo might be a better place to live than an amusement park (I would have to disagree with that claim though).  The best part of the marathon was that the students started to add evidence to support their claim.  

This type of writing and thinking is so important.  We want all of our students to be able to make a claim and support that claim with evidence.  We are going to talk about this all year long.  Each day in class we keep talking about how good readers find evidence to support their thinking inside of text.  Claim and evidence I cannot say them enough!!

Hope you are all having a great week.