Engage Your Students in Writing

Do you want your students to write effortlessly?

Jon Corippo shared 8 pARTS grammar at BLC15 last summer, and I was intrigued.

The basic idea is to get students to produce rich writing by having them practice often with highly stimulating images as the prompt.

Let me tell you...my students were tremendously engaged. They not only took to writing like they were writers, but they also were having fun - almost like they wanted to write.

I started with a picture of kids being mischievous that Corippo had shared (see it here). The students saw it projected on the board as they came in, and it immediately conjured conversation. I then had them recall the eight basic parts of speech and used the poem (linked here) to refresh any rusty recollections.

Then, the fun began.

Prompted by the image, students shared their ideas as I filled in this template:

• caveman sentence (grunts included)
• three verbs - and associated adverbs
• three nouns - and associated adjectives
• pronouns
• conjunctions
• prepositions
• interjections

Some struggled to participate accurately. But, hey, that’s what we were doing this for. They got the clarification they needed - especially about adverbs.

After we completed the template together, they wrote. And they wrote, and they wrote. Not one student struggled to begin or follow through. I was amazed at how they took to the writing.

And the results were spectacular. The writing was much more descriptive and rich than I was used to from my students. (There were some punctuation errors….but one step at a time.) They were using the parts of speech correctly, and their writing was more dynamic.  One example follows:

Charles and his acquaintance Bobby crudely redecorate his living room with the thick, white paint. Bobby was at Charles’ house and they were bored, so they decided to have a little fun. All of a sudden Charles’ mom burst into the room and shouted, “Golly!”

Charles looked up from the paint he was now spreading on the small television as terror crossed his face. He was in big trouble. Charles’ mom looked at the room in shock and thought to herself about how the children were being annoying and messy like the presidential candidates she was listening to on the radio just before. She quickly took out her phone and snapped a picture to put on Instagram where she now had a whopping 23 followers! She then walked over to the boys to begin scolding them when she slipped on the still wet paint and face-planted onto the floor. The boys took this as a cue to run out of sight of the angry woman.

The key, clearly, is finding highly engaging media to stimulate their writing.  In addition, the expectation for writing is only a paragraph, so students are getting a quick burst of practice.  By doing it often enough, I can see that students will become better writers.

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If you have used @jcorippo ‘s  8 pARTS grammar to enhance students learning or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing about them.

Student Created Content: Infographics

Technology in the classroom is best used when blended in as a tool that enhances learning. To that end I decided to expose my students to infographics.  They had had a little experience viewing them to gather information, and I let them loose to create their own.

Usually, students start to put together their “projects” prior to being well versed in the topic.  They love to incorporate colors, images, and fonts. Knowing that all products depend on the information and understanding the students have, and to prevent them from being distracted by the glitz of making the product, I didn’t even let them in on the fact they would be creating infographics until I felt comfortable with their information and understanding.

I broke the information gathering, processing, and synthesizing into steps and did check-ins along the way. This ensured that students were on track with their understanding.

Students loaded the Piktochart app onto the classroom Chromebooks and accessed it with their school accounts.  Trusting the students to figure the program out and to support one another, I told them they would be familiar with most of the tools in Piktochart. The only features I demonstrated to the students was how to add another block to extend the infographic and how to copy a block so they could repeat a design.  I also told them to let me know if they needed help.

The students were largely independent and problem solved individually and with their neighbors. I guided them whenever they ran into a roadblock.

Students were very successful creating attractive and effective infographics.  They enjoyed the blending of words, images, graphics, and colors. They had to consider effective design to balance these features in an organized and appealing manner. When questioned by a colleague visiting to see them in action, students explained how they envisioned how they could create infographics in his class and others.

Producing infographics is a creative and engaging process for students which emphasizes technology as a productivity tool, can demonstrate student understanding, and has students practice real-life skills.

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If you have used infographics to enhance students learning or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing about them.

BreakOut EDU: Stimulating Students' Thinking

BreakOut EDU offers curriculum related challenges for students, staff, or general team building.  The basic objective is to figure out clues and solve puzzles so you can open the box locked with several locks. Instead of purchasing a kit from them, I followed their guide to purchase materials to put together my own.  

Students working a lock to see if they solved the puzzle correctly.

I reviewed the activity options, chose one to fit my needs, set up the challenge, introduced the concept to the students, and let them have at it.  Students were highly engaged, had fun with the puzzles and clues, and felt the excitement of the timer ticking away.

The benefits of BreakOut EDU are that students have fun, practice critical thinking, enhance their skills working as a member of a team, and can even review some content. We definitely have to work in some more break outs!

Student reactions to participating in the experience follow:

• I liked this activity because it was something we’ve never done before, and it was challenging, and I like to be challenged.
• The timer made some people panic, and so they didn’t think clearly.  Other than that it was really good.
• Breakout was a challenging activity with clues and locks and problem solving.  Indeed it was hard.  It was a very fun activity that I would recommend to a a lot of people that like spy related things.  You really get the experiences that you’re actually under pressure.
• The Breakout activity was very engaging and thoughtful.
• The experience was fun.  We put our heads together and got as far as we could.
• This experience helped me work on my teamwork skills.  Also, I got to have fun while working on something that challenged me as an individual.
• It was fun to use skills from past experiences.
• This was a fun way to build our teamwork skills and remember what we learned in sixth grade. The challenge got us to problem solve.
• I think that it was fun and mysterious and also challenging.
• The experience was fun to work together and solve the puzzles to open the locks in a certain amount of time. The only problem was that we weren’t always listening to each other.

If you have used BreakOut EDU or other challenges to enhance students’ experiences or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing about them.