Writing to Learn

Writing to learn in an English classroom is probably much simpler to implement than in others. I use a variety of writing methods to engage students in both high and low stakes writing experiences. There is this really cool photo blog presentation that Ms. Payseur and I (and several other English teachers in the county) use for warm-ups (here's the link). Some of these journals, which I evaluate purely on completion, have led to hilarious stories and deep conversations in my class. I love the ones that require students to make up a story based on a picture because everyone interprets it differently and the stories are so diverse. One of the lessons I try to impress on my public speaking students is that speeches are very much like writing and to apply the organizational and research skills we develop in class to English 10 in the spring. I've found that many students are much better speakers as a form of communication than writers, so I try to use their strengths to help them bridge that gap. While we do not do much high stakes writing in public speaking, I make them adhere to organizational structures (outlining) that they can then apply to future writing assignments. It is really cool to see how they develop as communicators over the semester.

Silent Reflection

For my silence activity, I borrowed an idea from the presentation and had students complete a silent gallery walk. We are studying "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens" in public speaking. For one of the chapters, I created questions based on the reading students had completed the night before. Each student was given a marker and instructed to circle the room and answer the questions quietly on chart paper. It's never an easy feat to keep teenagers from talking the entire writing period, but they did pretty well. I made sure to include around 10 questions so there would be a variety of questions and to keep students from crowding around one question. As facilitator, I clarified questions and kept students moving. After all students had answered, I distributed the chart paper to different students and we discussed the answers provided as a whole group. I found this activity was a great way for students to all have input on questions and it didn't take a lot of time to do. The responses on the papers gave way to in-depth classroom discussion that I think would be lacking if we had discussed the chapter in a more traditional fashion. This is an activity that I would definitely try again.