Silent Start Writing

The steps

1. Choose a prompt anyone can start. Early on, keep prompts open: a memory, a place, an opinion, a picture on the board. Later, once the class writes freely, point some bursts at your topic.
2. Teach the rules, then set a visible timer. Give the rules in the same words each time.
   When I say go, your pen keeps moving until the timer sounds. If you get stuck, write 'I'm stuck, I'm stuck' until the next thought arrives. No rubbing out, no crossing out, and spelling can wait. Nobody reads this unless you choose. Four minutes. Go.
   Keep the rules on display so that you can point to them later. Set the timer for three or four minutes, placed where everyone can see it.
3. Write your own burst for the first minute. Sit where the class can see your pen moving. Writing alongside them shows that the burst is real work, and it stops you hovering. After your minute, look up and watch for stopped pens. Go to a writer who has stopped and point quietly at the stuck rule. Leave the page unread.
4. Stop on time and count words. When the timer sounds, say "pens down" and wait for full quiet. Ask everyone to count their words and write the number in the margin. That number is a private score to beat next time. Invite one or two volunteers to read a single line aloud.
5. Run it two or three times a week. Keep the same rules, the same length and, where you can, the same slot. The gains come from doing it often, so expect several weeks before the change shows in ordinary written work.
6. Build the bridge to judged writing. Every two or three weeks, ask the class to reread their bursts.
   Read back through your last few bursts. Circle one line that deserves a better sentence. We'll grow it into today's draft.
   Let the circled line become the seed of a piece of writing you will mark.

How you’ll know it’s working

• Pens are moving within about ten seconds of "go", including those of the students who used to lose the first five minutes of any written task.
• The margin counts climb: a student who managed thirty words in the first week is often past sixty after six weeks.
• The freeze shortens elsewhere: when you set ordinary written work, the gap between the instruction and the first word narrows across the room.
• More students volunteer to read a line aloud: none in the first week, then a handful within a month.

Weigh it up

Why it’s worth it

• The freeze shrinks. After weeks of practised starts, students tend to begin ordinary written tasks sooner, in your subject and beyond it.
• Writing lengthens everywhere. The stamina built in the bursts carries over into normal answers, and two thin lines slowly become a paragraph.
• It costs no marking. The books stay closed, so the fluency gains arrive without claiming a single evening of your time.
• It settles a room. Run as the lesson opener, a familiar silent burst calms the class before you teach, and it slots naturally into a Do Now.
• Weak writers get a winnable score. The private word count gives students who rarely win at writing a number that rises week after week.

The costs

• The payoff is slow. You spend ten to fifteen minutes a week for much of a term before the fluency appears in ordinary work.
• The writing itself is disposable. Most bursts never become anything more, and you have to accept pages of unmarked, unpolished writing in the books.
• The silence is a routine of its own. In a class that cannot yet hold quiet, bursts turn into whispering, so the quiet routine has to come first.