The 2nd annual 100 Days of Summer Writing is underway! Welcome, new friends! So good to see you, friends from last summer! We are hopeful that this will be a restorative and transformative experience for you both as a person and as a writing teacher!
We are also grateful to those of you who registered so that we can stay in touch with you and also hear your lingering questions! Here are some answers to your frequently asked questions!
What is the time commitment for this?
For you, it’s as much or as little as you want it to be. You can write for 100 days, or for 1 day! You can write for 5 minutes per day (set a timer so this feels manageable!) or for 30 minutes per day.
In your classroom, we call this practice of mentor-text-centered quickwrites Notebook Time. Literally, it’s the first 5-8 minutes of class that we spend jotting down ideas about a mentor text in our notebooks. We use this as a warm-up — one that is sometimes related to a larger unit of study and sometimes isn’t, one that sometimes grows into a larger piece of writing and sometimes doesn’t.
Is it too late for me to jump in?
Never! Just like there is nothing magical about January 1, there is nothing magical about June 1 for summer writing! Jump in anytime you’re ready! Take a break if you need one! Jump back in! This is for you, so you have the power!
Do I need to write about the notebook time invitations in order? What happens if I miss a day?
No need to work in order. (Though our Facebook community does!) Jump around to what inspires you! And if nothing inspires you at the moment, feel free to write about absolutely anything you want.
If you miss a day, nothing happens. No one knows but you. 🙂 Jump back in whenever you’re ready.
How do I bring this to my students in the fall?
Now, that’s a bigger question! 🙂 In Writing With Mentors, Allison and I dedicate two chapters to introducing your students to mentor texts (so they know what to do with these!) and using Notebook Time with your students.
We will tackle this question in a variety of ways throughout the summer, but here are a few of the myriad blog posts about Notebook Time from Moving Writers to get you started:
- Notebook Time: What it is and why we do it
- 100 Days of Summer Writing 2018: Introducing Notebook Time
- What Time is It? Notebook Time!
- 10 Ideas for Notebook Time
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