English Educator. Lifelong Learner.
Happy National Day on Writing!
Please enjoy this digital composition (“Why We Write”) co-created by 10th graders in honor of the National Day on Writing. Click here to expand the individual images.
Drawings were created on Surface tablets (using OneNote and Sketchpad), and the final composition was created with Padlet.
Now that all my students have a school-issued Surface tablet, I let them choose how they want to take notes. When we were reviewing literary terms last week, I instructed students to take notes and snapped a picture of this tableau:
While some research worth sharing with students suggests that handwritten notes may be better for learning, I’ve noticed that now that they have the option to type, my students are less reluctant when I ask them to take notes, and even more likely to start taking notes on their own without my prompting. [ . . . ]
They hurtled into the room, grabbing the thickest, most neglected books from my shelf—titles like The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare and The American Tradition in Literature—rushing them into the hallway, returning for more, until they’d built a wobbly skyscraper of books. What kind of assignment could spark such enthusiasm?
When educators talk about authentic writing, they are talking about assignments written for real audiences—not just for the teacher—that provide students with opportunities to make choices and write about ideas that matter to them. Ken Lindblom argued in a recent Writers Who Care blog post that good writing instruction offers opportunities for students to write in a variety of genres, invites students to write for real audiences and make meaningful choices, and incorporates feedback from multiple audiences throughout the writing process. [ . . . ]