Get to Know Your Students with our WriQ Challenge

For a teacher, some of the most exciting and important “lessons” to plan during the first few days of school are those that help you get to know your new students. While getting-to-know-you exercises are fun for teachers and students alike, they are also critical in building a strong foundation for the rest of the year.

Getting to Know You

As Jennifer Gonzalez argues, “Building solid relationships with your students is arguably the most important thing you can do to be an effective teacher. It helps you build trust so students take academic risks, allows you to better differentiate for individual needs, and prevents the kinds of power struggles often found in poorly managed classrooms.”

For writing teachers specifically, it is also important to get to know your new students as writers. This will “allow you to be able to set meaningful writing goals for your students”. The writing prompt is a great way to get to know your students on both a personal and academic level - keeping the activity fun while gaining some meaningful insight into your students’ writing skills.

Contest Details

This is where you come in.

Between now and September 20th, we want to hear what writing prompts you use (or plan to use) in your classroom to get to know your students at the beginning of the year.

All you have to do is share your writing prompt ideas on Twitter using the hashtag #WriQChallenge. Feel free to add in any additional details, including grade level, a great student response, or anything else meaningful to the exercise. And of course, share as many writing prompts as you'd like. The more the merrier!

One lucky participant will be chosen at random to win a free, one-year premium license of WriQ, our new writing assessment tool for Google Docs.

Speaking of WriQ...

If you’re really hoping to get to know your students this new school year, WriQ is a great way to learn about their writing abilities from day one. It automatically checks student writing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as provides pre-built rubrics to help you evaluate knowledge, purpose, voice, organization, and more.

Through this standardized assessment of student writing, you can gain an accurate picture of each students’ writing ability, which can help you individualize your feedback and design personalized writing goals for the year. Plus, with the WriQ Dashboard, you can track your students’ progress throughout the year to accurately report on how each student is doing.

So, why not get WriQ from the Chrome Store today to review those writing prompts you’ve assigned?!

Thanks for participating in our #WriQChallenge and good luck!