Imagine your students can write 20 words in one minute on average. That would mean that they could write 400 words in 20 minutes – so you could ask them to write 400 words a day and that would be fair. Right?
What about writer’s cramp? Yes, writing at full speed for 20 minutes can produce that.
What about the fact that you told me to keep writing no matter what – not to stop to think – to keep going? Yes, stopping to think will slow you down.
What if I struggle to write even 15 words per minute? True, if the target is too high you won’t want to “play the game of school. ” Your non-fluent writers have to stay in the game.
So, you take off some for each of the 3 issues, I would suggest in a group that could hypothetically write 400 words in 20 minutes, you could have a target number as low as 200 words per day and “keep them in the game.”
Remember too, you started with the middle student – half of your students will write a great deal faster than this.
