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     When I was a student back in the last century, there were three things you could count on happening the first day of school;  somebody would throw up, the PA system issued a stream of incomprehensible directives ("First lunch students will eat during second lunch...").  While my teacher figured out the intricacies of her Delaney Book seating chart, there would be our first assignment on the chalkboard, right under "Hello, my name is Mrs. (Fill in the Blank). 99 per cent of the time it was "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." Sometimes this was followed by the threat "Spelling and punctuation count. Must be at least 250 words."

      This assignment was so predictable that after second grade, I started wrting the essay in advance, so I could read a library book instead. The kids who went to the Wisconsin Dells or some place truly exotic like Disneyland had no problem. Kids who stayed home and spent the summer running through the lawn sprinkler or worse, in summer school, (the equivalent of a stint in Sing Sing) stared at their three ring binders, and sweated bullets.  Five minutes into the school year, and the threat of next year's summer school was already nipping at their heels.

     Somewhere between my school days and my daughter's, the "What I Did..." essay had gone the way of the dodo bird. Instead, every morning, she was expected to write in a "journal" for five to ten minutes, using a writing prompt on the white board. I am not a fan of writing prompts. It's hard to come up with a hundred and eighty or so age-appropriate writing prompts, year after year. The kids knew that what they wrote didn't matter, just that they wrote something. Their grade came from the teaching flipping through the journals looking for blank pages or suspiciously short essays.

    Whoever came up with the journal idea had good intentions. Being able to write English fluently is always a handy skill. Unfortunately, journals turn an awful lot of kids off. I wouldn't be a writer today if I had been expected to write on a narrowly defined topic, first thing in the morning. Every morning. By middle school, these journals were used in every class (except P.E.). Six or seven prompts a day would give me brain freeze.

     OK teachers, I am going to give you a writer's workout that will cause you to roll your eyes, gnash your teeth, and call me nasty names (hopefully, not in front of your class.) And yes, it will take more time (in the beginning). Ready?  Let's rev up that creative part of the brain that has probably lain dormant all summer.

Writer's Workout

(This is adapted from Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi.)

   Equipment needed:  Teacher:  A timer, a small legal pad, and writing instrument. Students; the same,minus the timer.

    Plan plenty of time for this exercise; the more students you have, the more time you'll need. Don't plan on multitasking. Your students will need your full attention.

    First, share a couple of your own (short) ancedotes. This serves several purposes. One, students seem more open to learning if they know a little something about you. Something interesting to them.  For instance, second graders are probably not going to care that you like gardening, have two grandchildren and your cat got stuck in a tree last week.

   They may be intereste

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