Guided Choice Writing

As I have posted earlier, I am teaching Latin 1 again and am doing things much differently than I have in the past. So much of this is due to my own increased understanding of what is considered realistic language proficiency at this level (Novice Lowish) and that in many ways in the past, my own expectations of student proficiency for Latin 1 were wrong. I have focused on sheltering vocabulary BIG TIME, targeting high frequency words, with the intent of going "deep and simple" and not "shallow and complex."

As a result, when it has come to writing, I have been experimenting with students doing "guided writes" instead of doing timed writes. In a "guided write," like the name states, I am guiding students through what I want them to write for the creation of a story, since they are novice low writers. There is a degree of student choice where they can add their own details, but I tell them EXACTLY what they are to write for each sentence based on a word bank. I am also only focusing on words which we have been targeting. Below are some examples from throughout the semester:

Week 6

Week 10

Week 14

Observations

1. If you take a look at the three examples, you can see that I keep adding more details or focus on different aspects as the semester progresses. In the last example, you can see that the focus is on creating guided longer, compound sentences using and and because.
2. I like the guided aspect, because for these novice-low students, I do not think that they are ready to just "write" without very specific parameters
3. In many ways, the sentences are like those in Rotating Desks where I am telling students what to write and that they have choice in adding details.
4. Will students' grammar be correct? Most likely, no! BUT I also have NO expectations of it to be, since they are novice low learners. I am only interested in "Are they communicating in a way which I as a sympathetic receptor can understand?" I cannot tell you HOW FREEING that perspective is as a teacher!
5. Even though I am telling students what to write, hopefully as they write these sentences, students are understanding those messages which they are writing. Thus, this is adding to/refining their mental representation of the language. 
6. This is a precursor to the 4-Word Story writing activity which I will introduce to them next semester. By then, these students should have a foundation where they can write more freely on their own.

Have you done something like this? If not, give it a try, and let me know how it goes!