3 THE RIGHT TO GO OFF TOPIC

Frequently when Muriel and I were hosting workshops for teachers of writing, we had a 3-sheet writing activity that always worked to create a personally viable topic to write about. The 3 pieces of paper took writers through the entire writing process, but for me, the first page was the most important - selecting my topic. I knew that if the topic and I connected, I could write a decent essay.

Probably the one thing students struggle with the most is writing to a prompt that has no relationship to their life experience. Frequently, when I gave a prompt, I might find 90% of students writing to it, and yet, there was that 10% that either wrote about something else or couldn't relate to the topic and didn't write at all. Or, there were the students who started out on the given topic and gradually wandered away from it as the topic triggered peripheral ideas that they wanted to talk about.

So, what do we do when we receive papers that don't stay on topic? Spandel suggests bending the rules a bit. Certainly students need to know when and why it's important to stay on topic such as in high-stakes testing. But for classroom assignments, and as we encourage students to write more,  Spandel suggests that addressing the prompt be given a low priority on our rubrics.

When we give students flexibility in their writing, they loosen up, their voice emerges, and they create engaging pieces.

"If we truly believe that writing is thinking, then we must let our writers go where their thinking leads them - and as far as it will take them, even if it means leaving the best of our prompts far, far behind."
-Spandel