A solution I'll introduce is to include a variety of literacy activities as part of a class writing tumble. The intention is to keep the writing aspect fresh and use oral and visual independent activities to develop an audience and foster creativity in the students.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, 25 August 2014
Variety is the Spice of Life
Reflecting upon my writing programme I noticed that the spark and the creativity had gone from the students in their work. For some of them, personal voice had become less prevalent. During conferencing, we are predominantly talking about learning goals and rubric targets, next steps. Descriptive language was being used and praised, but more in the tone of including some for 'my audience' rather than exploring words and being creative and imaginative. In short, writing isn't as fun as it used to be.
Sunday, 29 June 2014
Writing Tools: Thinking Outside the Box (a bit)
One of my own learning goals in terms 2 and 3 is to use online tools to assist in developing students writing. The first one we have applied in our learning programme is Go-animate. Students can log in and create thirty-second animated video clips of their writing using scripts and animated characters from the website.
In the three weeks that we have been using this tool, I've noticed a change in the students' writing. Because they have to keep their ideas to a 30-second script, they are using key information only. There are added benefits in improving editing skills as well. By listening to their script being read back to them multiple times by their characters, the students are beginning to listen to see if their ideas are expressed clearly. They are looking to re-craft their work to meet the time limit and also to maintain the key points of information they want to share.
An unexpected spinoff has been in reading, where my students are applying the same learning to summarise succinctly.
Next term, I will be investigating the use of other online tools to scaffold into the classroom programme.
Below is an example of one of our students go-animate video.
How does a volcano erupt by Kahlicia677xmgv on GoAnimate
In the three weeks that we have been using this tool, I've noticed a change in the students' writing. Because they have to keep their ideas to a 30-second script, they are using key information only. There are added benefits in improving editing skills as well. By listening to their script being read back to them multiple times by their characters, the students are beginning to listen to see if their ideas are expressed clearly. They are looking to re-craft their work to meet the time limit and also to maintain the key points of information they want to share.
An unexpected spinoff has been in reading, where my students are applying the same learning to summarise succinctly.
Next term, I will be investigating the use of other online tools to scaffold into the classroom programme.
Below is an example of one of our students go-animate video.
How does a volcano erupt by Kahlicia677xmgv on GoAnimate
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