Many other educators have written extensively about the practice, benefits and theory behind timed writes. I will include a few of their links at the bottom of this page. In brief, here are few reasons to consider using timed writes:
- encourage student writing in a low-stress context;
- increase student confidence;
- help students to see their progress over time (through a writing portfolio)
- show students, parents, colleagues and administrators proof of student progress
- provides hard evidence in response to criticisms that your class is not (as) effective compared to other teachers or methods.
The use of timed writes does require teachers and students to have a different (i.e. updated) relationship to errors and error correction. Recent research does not support the notion that error correction leads to an improvement in language proficiency.
Links to more information on timed writes:
https://latinbestpracticescir.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/timed-writes/