Written? Kitten! - Word Counts

I know what you might be thinking, "I am an educator. My practice is serious. Sara Millward, why the heck are you bringing kittens into my classroom?"

Hey.
Hear me out for just a second.

WrittenKitten is an free-to-use website that counts your words. Plain and simple. There's no worrying about font or spacing or anything fancy like that. Word. Count. Whenever you hit the word count (which you set to 100, 200, 500 or 1000), the site gives you some sweet, sweet, positive reinforcement in the form of a picture. Of a cat. Or a dog. Or a bunny. Something small and fluffy and delightful.

For your students with disabilities or who have trouble focusing on a task for too long, the instant reward can be a great motivator to continue writing. This can be helpful for in-class writings (because for some reason, the number of ceiling tiles is really entertaining) or as a resource for students to take home when given an essay. I'm a secondary educator, so my ideas are more focused on high-school students. Just writing those weekly reflections, you know that 200 words can be quite a lot to do! For elementary educators, especially early grade levels, this is more applicable to big projects like a short story or a five-paragraph essay. Where our 100 and 200 words are stepping stones for high-schoolers, consider using those as the finish lines for your elementary students.

If students have assigned computer seats or laptops/chromebooks, you're in luck, too! The web-browser will save and remember your work - perfect if your lesson runs long or gets cut short by a pesky fire-drill.

I'm not suggesting this as a fix-everything resource for all students. Some of your students might view it as childish or demeaning. That's fine - they don't have to use it. This is more of a resource like, "Hey, look at this cool thing! If you find it useful, use it." I can be perfectly honest and say that, as an undergraduate, if I have trouble working on an assignment (mostly those smaller ones that you just don't want to do), I work on it in WrittenKitten.

WrittenKitten was originally developed as a free version of Write or Die, which costs $20 to use (I don't know if it's a one-time purchase or not - I don't use it!). Write or Die, if your interested, is a more robust word-count tool that can be used for positive reinforcement as well. It's more known, however, for it's negative reinforcement.
Not writing enough? Let's start deleting that you have! Or, to be a little more confusing, let's just delete the vowels. Tht wll tch y t slck ff n clss!
You can set it to specify word count per measure of time. If you want everyone in class to write 500 words in 30 minutes, it calculates how many words per minute that is. If a student isn't quite up to speed, it'll let them know.

Write or Die is a great writing resource, but you have to purchase it and its purpose is really for authors writing longs works that can't stay focused. I can't in good conscious say that elementary instructors should use it - it's a little intense! High-school teachers, if you school will buy accounts (discounts for teachers and students!), absolutely give it a try! (Especially for in-class free writes!) You set the requirements ahead of time, so each class can be different. Better yet, individualize that instruction for your students! Jordan has trouble focusing, so lets say 350 words in 30 minutes. 500 is way to easy for Jessie, so let's try to push them to 650 words instead.

WrittenKitten, in summary, is a simple word-counting website that rewards users for hitting their word count with a picture or an adorable animal. It's not perfect and not all of your students may find it useful, but for the students who do want to use it, let them. When a 3 page paper (1500 words!!) sounds like too much to tackle all at once, it helps to think of it as 15 fuzzy animals. I can handle that.

Written? Kitten! - writtenkitten.net
Write or Die - writeordie.com