October 20, 2012, is the National Day on Writing, sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and recognized by US Senate Resolution 565. I thought you’d like to know about it. NCTE has plenty of information about the day on their website, and getting your students to be a part is easy.
The theme of this year’s National Day on Writing is “What I Write.” While it may come naturally for your students to simply answer the question with “school stuff,” this may be just the opportunity you need to get them to think a little deeper and use writing to explore who they are.
The author Joan Didion, in an essay for the New York Times Book Review in 1976, stated, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
Involve your students in the National Day on Writing this Friday (it’s okay to celebrate a day early!) by asking them to write about what they’re thinking, what they see when they stare into the distance, what thoughts are running through their brains, what they’re afraid of, what they want to know.
Let your students write for 45 minutes or just 15. Tell them to simply connect their pens or pencils to their fingers. Then tell them to hardwire their fingers straight into the deepest parts of their minds. Then set them free to go for it!
Of course, you’ll find dozens of great writing prompts in the pages of The Mailbox magazine or online at themailbox.com. If you’ve got ideas for the National Day on Writing that you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.
Reminder! Sign up for one of our new e-newsletters – Common Core Connections or Literature Links – and tell me about it in the comments of the previous blog post before midnight, October 17! I’ll pick a random winner of a FREE book from The Mailbox.