Escritura (Writing Process)

Been struggling all year with writing in my Spanish 5 class.  How do I get kids to write without compromising themselves or second guessing their linguistic abilities?  Without cheating?  What is cheating?  Do we decide together?  Do I tell them?  Do I require drafts?  Only assign writing in class on paper?

I have toyed with all those things and just today, I think it is finally going well.  Last Friday before break they wrote collaborative one-act plays about two sides of the same person.  (Based on She and Ella in Coser y Cantar by Dolores Prida).  They were all in a circle and in groups of three, each group had two minutes with they play, then they had to pass it on and work on another.  I think in 45 minutes we wrote 4 plays, as a class.  They were a little irreverent (okay-- a lot irreverent, but it was the last day before vacation), but it was fun, and funny, and we were all working together and most of us were writing. 

Then today they started work on their individual projects.  Same idea:  a one act play with two charachters representing two sides of one person.  We made a rubric together then they each began work on a google doc.  They had to invite another spanish speaker (someone in the class or elsewhere) and me.  So while the wrote, I looked over their progress and sent them little notes in the chat feature, or made some collaborative edits and could see their progress as they were writing. 

Another feature we have added is that all words that they look up, or use a translator to find, need to be in red, and then they have to put a definition of the word, in Spanish, at the end of their work.  This seems to be going well too and then we can use the lists as learning opportunities for the rest of the students when we do the peer reviews.  That will be next week.  Then they will perform their plays.  I wonder if they will let me video them?!