Engage, Empower, Inspire: 2 words 2 minutes...

2 words 2 minutes is a great way to engage all my learners in writing regardless of ability level. This is my version of an idea I have tweaked from Jeff Anderson's book 10 Things Every Writing Needs to Know. It is a power writing challenge that helps to build writing stamina. Jeff Anderson uses 2 words 1 minute but I have found the extra minute allows for thinking time. For our lower ability writers we use 'teacher minutes' to allow them to find success at their own level.

Before we began I wrote two words on the board generated by my students, ‘Greece’ and ‘athletes’. Students needed to include both words in their writing. To add a fun element I used a randomiser after asking everyone for a word. The topic we chose was the Ancient Olympics. This allowed me to see how much learning they had retained from our inquiry challenge as well as allowing them to recall facts from a known and recently explored topic. 

Before we started we set some norms:

1. Don't stress, just guess! (This took away the need to stop the flow of writing when the correct spelling wasn't able to be recalled).
2. Write as fast as you can.
3. Make sure its makes sense.

We talked about ideas with a partner, then we had 2 minutes to put those ideas into sentences. After the time was up we had 2 minutes to reread what we had written and make changes if anything didn’t make sense or if we had words and punctuation in the wrong place. We did this part in pairs. When we finished checking we had 2 more minutes to carry on writing our descriptions. At the end of each two minutes of writing time my learners counted their words and wrote the number in the margin. 

We added to the challenge by co constructing a list of the language features and punctuation we should include: capital letters, full stops, commas, question marks, simple/compound/complex sentences, adjectives and adverbs. At least one example of each used correctly was expected. 

As we become more familiar with this task I add to this list to include anything we have been focusing on in our literacy lessons and increase the the word and minute count. 

What was exciting to watch was seeing each student find success as they all wrote more words than the first time we did this activity. A bonus was that I was able to use what they had written to see how much of the learning in Inquiry had transferred to Writing. In total we talked for 2 minutes, wrote for 4 minutes with an additional 8 minutes of proof reading (2 minutes per person each time). Then had 1 minute to look at anything we needed to practise or had omitted. This became our personal learning intentions (PLI). This meant the whole activity took 15 minutes from start to finish and definitely is a fun way to increase confidence and build stamina in writing.