I love to write, but that was not always the case. Growing up writing was a rigid process guided by the teacher that was filled with planning, drafting, revising, and editing until the red pen told us we could stop. Just thinking about it makes me sweat. But as I have gotten older, I have grown to love writing. As a teacher I want my students to love writing too. After years of watching, learning, and teaching writing, I have found two different types of writing that every student should be doing.

I’m not talking about personal narratives, expository writing, or poetry. No, what I’m talking about is a broader category that has its roots in the purpose of the writing. Once I started implementing this in my classroom and while homeschooling my son, I saw significant changes in the quality of writing all students were putting out. Let’s dive into what these are and how you can use them in your classroom.

Types of Writing Activities You Need to Be Teaching

There are two types of writing we, as teachers, need to be familiar with: free writing and process writing. The main difference between these two types of writing lies in what the brain is doing. While it is easy to think that ‘writing is writing,’ the underlying skills are very different.

1. Free Writing

What is Free Writing?

Free writing is often the type of writing that is left out of the writing curriculum. But doing so is such a mistake. Free writing is less structured writing activities that are meant to let your students practice getting their thoughts on paper. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Free writing enables students to write without the pressure or fear of being assessed or graded. This is a time when your students can freely explore their thoughts and ideas, learn to process their thoughts, and practice turning those ideas in their heads into words on paper. Activities that promote free writing in the classroom include prompts, journals, and quick writes.

Why is Free Writing Important?

The significance of free writing lies in the benefits it offers students. Free writing helps to enhance or develop students’ creative thinking skills and writing fluency. With practice, the process of turning those thoughts into written words becomes easier. Allowing students time to truly focus on this skill is imperative. And. . . it will only help their process writing. After all, writing begins with developing thoughts and turning them into written words that make sense.

Implementing Free Writing in Your Classroom

One of the best ways to implement free writing in the classroom is with a time of daily writing. This might look like a morning journal that students do when they arrive, or it might be 10 minutes of writing as a warm-up to your language arts block. Whatever it is, just get your kids writing.

I have found that teaching writing gets easier when students become confident in their ability to put their thoughts and ideas on the paper. Varying the “how” will only help students grow stronger in this skill. Start by giving students a writing prompt of some sort to get them started. This might be a written prompt or a picture prompt, but giving them a starting place cuts down on not knowing what to write about. Once they have a starting place their effort is then focused on ideas and putting them into words.

The more students engage in free writing activities, the more these important skills will develop. I have seen free writing help all students, even those with difficulty writing, improve their overall writing quality.

2. Process Writing

What is Process Writing?

Process writing is probably what you think of as a writing assignment. They are assignments that are taken through some or all of the steps of the writing process. Process writing assignments are usually graded for correctness in language skill proficiency.

Process writing helps you to check for proficiency in writing and language. These pieces allow your students to work through the entire writing process. The amount of writing looks a little bit different at every grade level. It will vary from writing sentences to paragraphs to essays. No matter the level of writing, the steps taken are the same.

The writing process includes prewriting (idea generation and planning), drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Each of these steps plays an important role in helping our students develop their writing skills.

Why is Process Writing Important?

Through the writing process, your students will continually refine their work while also working on their skills. Students learn many valuable skills through the writing process. At each of the steps in the process, we can teach skills like word choice, punctuation, sentence structure, and more. Process writing allows us to dive into our students’ work and assess their proficiency levels on all of these things.

Incorporating Process Writing in Your Instruction

Process writing takes a lot longer than free writing so one piece of writing can often take a week or longer. Depending on the ability of your students, this might be a personal narrative, informational writing connected to a topic you are learning about in science or social studies, or a research project.

When you are teaching writing using this type you will want to make sure to build multiple days into your schedule. Giving students ample time to dive into each step without feeling rushed helps them to get the most learning out of the process.

In my classroom, I found that the number of process pieces varied greatly by grade level. In kindergarten, we could complete two or more each month because they were generally short or broken up into small chunks. However, in third grade completing one per month allowed us time for skills-based lessons and free writing too.

Finding the Sweet Spot

When teaching writing, the key to creating successful writers is to balance these two types of writing opportunities throughout your lessons. Setting up your writing time in a way that allows for both types of writing activities is key to helping your students grow their skills and confidence in writing.

One of the best ways I have found to do this is by allowing students to choose a free writing piece as the starting place for a process writing piece. In my classroom, free writing happens every day. Depending on the skills we are working on and the writing genre we are studying, the prompts will change. For example, when we are studying opinion writing or persuasive writing, Would You Rather writing prompts are a student favorite. Picture writing prompts are great for personal narratives, creative writing, and working on descriptive writing. I also like to keep in what students are writing so that they don’t get bored.

When it is time for a process piece, I ask students to review their free writings from a certain time period. I allow students to pick their favorite prewriting piece to continue working on and take through the steps of the writing piece. Not only do students love this, but it gives them an opportunity to take something they feel good about and make it even better.

It is important to note that when used together, we can provide students with a range of benefits and can create a comprehensive writing experience for our students. Once I found this sweet spot, teaching writing was never more fun and effective.

Teaching Writing with This Approach

Start with Free Writing

Let’s dive into an example of how I put this approach into practice in the classroom. One of the ways I like to get my students started is by using this Would You Rather writing prompt resource. Don’t you think your students would enjoy answering the question, “Would you rather eat a lizard or a beetle?” Mine do!

Would You Rather writing prompts provide students with a variety of quick, fun prompts that they can easily write about because they are giving their opinions. These fun and sometimes silly prompts help even the most reluctant of writers to start writing!

I like to give my students Would You Rather writing prompts every morning. This has been the perfect morning work activity to get my students focused on learning while also having some fun! Each day, I have my students save their writing in a journal or folder so that they can come back to it at a later date.

Lessons Focus on Writing Skills

In the meantime, during our language arts block, we are using mini-lessons to explore writing opinions and supporting them with details. This is where teaching writing focuses on the skills we want students to develop. It will be this skill that we put into practice during our process writing.

Starting the Process Writing

When it is time to begin our process writing, students are permitted to look through all of the Would You Rather prompts they have written about during free writing. They are asked to choose one that they would like to expand on and take through the writing process.

Once they have made their selection we start at the beginning of the writing process and work on idea generation and planning. Students know that they can keep the original ideas they wrote about or change them. But this time we are planning and writing with the skill of supporting our opinions with details.

Once the planning is complete students write their first draft. This may take a day or two of class time to complete. Then we move on to revising (making changes to improve the quality of writing) and editing (correcting mistakes in the writing). Finally, students will write and publish their final writing piece. Don’t forget to include a way for students to share their writing. This might be orally or by displaying the writing.

My Favorite Writing Resources

There are so many ways you can put this approach to teaching writing into action. Here are a few of my favorites to get you started! As always, feel free to check out my store Teaching in Blue Jeans for more fun!

• Would You Rather Writing Prompts
• Build a Scene Writing Prompts
• Picture Writing Prompt Bundle
• Draw and Write Activities

I would love for you to try this approach out in your classroom. These Draw and Write pages will not only get your students excited about writing, but they make a great starting place for a variety of different writing genres too. You can focus on informational writing about the chosen animal, how-to writing using “how to take care of” or “how to catch” as the starter, or even a personal narrative about an experience the student has had with the animal. Use the Draw and Write free writing pages to get started.

Save These Tips for Teaching Writing

If you found this information useful, make sure to pin this page for later. Remember the importance of looking at writing as a whole and giving yourself (and your students) grace to improve and learn through free writing as well as process writing!