However, when you're dealing with Seniors in the final third of their final year of high school, sometimes papers are better if they're written right away. If students are given two weeks to write a paper, they'll likely good around for a week before starting the process and then not even write the bulk of it until the day or two before. This year, I'm helping this process along by only giving them five days. Five days to conceive of an idea, write the thesis statement, find the quotes, make the heading...and then actually typing the thing. It sounds like a recipe for some bad papers, but after running this process last year, I found that the overall quality is pretty comparable. If anything, it's a little bit better since students are focused for a short burst rather than a long haul.
Paper Blitz kicked off yesterday, continues today and tomorrow, and the final products are due on Monday. We'll know by then if this was a good idea or not...