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Discover alternative writing methods to engage students and enhance learning. Learn about Bargain Boxes, A-B-C Books, Shared Pen, Collaborative Tasks, Children's Book, Comic Books, Documentaries, and more. Shake up traditional writing practices with these creative approaches!
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Changing the Way We Write Jennifer Weninger Mountain Creek STEM Academy
On a sheet of paper… • What do your students like about writing? (Yes, reasons exist!) • What do your students dislike about writing? • What would your students rather be doing than writing?
Why the 5 Paragraph Essay? • It’s what we know! • It’s formulaic. • It’s easy.
Student Opinion? • It’s boring. • It’s time consuming. • It’s too much writing. • When am I going to use this in life? • Again? Didn’t we just do this?
It’s Time To Shake It Up! • Why rely on the same old same old, when there is a whole world of constantly evolving technology? • Technology is time consuming • We don’t have enough time to master before teaching • We not only have to teach the concept, but technology use too.
Bargain Boxes • It’s a lot of analyzing, with little work on your part. It’s a bargain if I ever saw one! • A quick way to have student get all of the basics (plot, characters, figurative language, symbolism, etc) with one activity. • Student create a box out of paper and each side of the box has an assigned activity. • Great for differentiation.
A-B-C Books • Takes the place of a lengthy literary analysis. • For each letter of the A-B-Cs, students find a character, object, idea, or symbol from the book to represent that letter. • Next to the chosen word, they must write a short blurb of what it represents and why it was important to the story.
Shared Pen • Great for students that suffer from writer’s block or struggle to start a new paragraph. • Partners outline their topic together. Then, they take turns writing paragraphs. If a student gets stuck, their partner can assist with guiding the next sentence.
STOP! COLLABORATE & LISTEN! • Create a task with another subject area: • Science • History • Technology • Each teacher gives specific requirements and grades for those requirements. • RUBRICS, RUBRICS, RUBRICS!!
Children’s Book • Great for cross curricular activities. • Use for breaking down advance concepts. • Students take a topic and chunk it into smaller concepts. They then take these chunks and present them in a manner that younger students will understanding (content will determine audience). • Makes students responsible for their own learning.
Comic Books • Great for students that struggle with writing, especially connecting the writing dots. • Great for artistic students. • Draw your own or use website: • Bitstrip.com (30 day freebie) • Makebeliefscomix.com (freebie) • Stripgenerator.com (freebie)
Documentaries • Ideal for students that lose focus with longer writing pieces. • Students research a given or selected topic. • They then answer the given aspects of the topic in multiple short paragraphs. • After putting the information in a logical order, they prepare their script recording and organize research pictures and videos.
Your Turn! • In order to show how easy it really is, and familiarize yourselves with the technology, you are going to create a documentary. • I promise, it’s not difficult! • In a small group you will comb for phone for pictures and videos. You will then combine these into a video to inform about your group members. Add vocals to explain the pictures. Your Life Documentary should be about 1 minute long.