Write-Away Days are intended to provide a week of writing instruction and practice for middle and high school students. Teachers should create their own writing prompts based on the curriculum to elicit well-constructed student responses. During the week, teachers should provide instruction on writing skills like organization, vocabulary, and transitions to help students improve. Teachers should score student writing using a rubric to provide feedback and guide further class instruction, rather than extensive grading. The Four Square graphic organizer can help students with organization and development when writing responses.

1. Write-Away Days 2010-2011
Prompt Writing Guidelines for Middle School and High School
The following guidelines may be helpful to Middle School/High School teachers regarding
Write-Away Days:
• Make Write-Away Day into Write-Away Week. No matter what day it is scheduled for,
use the whole week as content/standards related reading and writing instruction and
practice.
• Teachers should create their own prompts, either individually or collaboratively. This
makes for much more relevant prompts that are curriculum-based or meaningful to
content and text being covered in class. Teachers make excellent professional decisions
about what prompts can elicit a well constructed writing response from students based
on genre, themes, text, and content. (See the Power Point on “What Makes a Good
Prompt”.)
• Prompt Writing or Constructed Response Writing makes for an excellent PLC study.
• Keep in mind that prompt writing is first draft writing regarding the test. Write-Away is
a chance to do lots of instruction using the Four Square power points on the web such
as writing response to reading/text, organization and development, vocabulary,
transition words, etc. Students do not necessarily need to take prompted pieces
through the edit, revise, and publish process.
• Scoring of Write-Away papers should be done by the teacher and used as a class
instructional exercise based on the 1-6 point holistic scoring rubric. The teacher does
not need to spend a great deal of time grading these papers but simply scoring 1-6
according to the rubric and hopefully adding some feedback regarding one particular
skill or concept as a curricular focus. Students benefit by instructional time spent during
the week on how scores are given, without using student names of course, and on the
curricular/content focus of the writing. Multiple ways to recognize improvement is
encouraged. (See the Power Point “The Scoop on Scoring”.
• The Four Square Graphic Organizer helps most with organization and development and
are key to obtaining a proficient score (four or better) as well as being helpful in all
writing situations. Instruction in the use of the Four Square graphic organizer is time
well spent in all content areas.
• Students need to be aware that the Four Square Organizer is intended for pre-writing
and brainstorming of about five minutes. It is a way to organize thoughts for the
development of the essay and should be used to jot notes and thoughts. The graphic
organizer is not for the actual writing of sentences and paragraphs.