Writing

Writing blog:

Have you ever wondered what the person who invented the alphabet was thinking? How the first words formed? Who decided what the rules for proper grammar was? These are some of the few questions I was thinking about when I started WRITING this blog.

           Welcome back! In this blog, I will be covering the writing strand of language. The expectation for writing can be found on pages 12 & 13 in Ontario’s Language Curriculum.  The four expectations concentrate on key components of writing skills and writing process level, including planning, drafting, review, editing, and proofreading, as well as publishing written work. In this blog, I will be sharing and exploring three resources that will support my students in becoming effective writers.

30 Ideas for Teaching Writing

           The first resource 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing offers variations of concepts that can be used to support students writing. I really resonated with idea #23: requiring students to make a persuasive written argument in support of a final grade. Students often think that their skill is not thoroughly tested by the tasks and assessments provided in the class. Teachers can only test students for limited information but expanding on their knowledge will educate the instructor about the student's true understanding of the course. It would be fascinating to see how students explain their own marks before teachers send their final grades to students. Adding on to this resource, I recently came across a post that recommended teachers providing their students with a blank page at the end of a test to write about their additional knowledge on any topic that was not assessed in the test. I believe this is a great opportunity for students to practice writing and expand on their knowledge about the topic and would work as a great bonus mark question. The additional 29 ideas are just as great, some work to enhance a teacher’s knowledge in writing, some support students in enhancing their writing and others support teachers and students for working collaboratively. 

  

Pinterest:

        

      The second resource I chose to explore is Pinterest. Specifically, Brock’s IRC Pinterest page is very organized and a valuable resource for teachers and students. The page has topics divided into different boards, for writing specifically, the IRC has sorted books in different genres. Children and teachers go under any board and explore the different genres of books. As a teacher, I would get my students to explore the social justice books board and choose a book to read as a class and get them to write a reflection or a blog post on the book. Other boards contain writing activities that students can do before, during, or after reading a book. Some activities that I will be using with my classrooms are book reports, graphic organizers, summary writing, writing outlines that can be used to remember concepts as we read the book.

         

Role- Play Characters via Twitter and Blogger:

          

  The third resource that is great for enhancing students writing is fake twitter. Even though this resource was not mentioned under explore resources, it is something I used in high school. The target audience for this resource is typically high school students but could also be incorporated into the intermediate grade. Fake twitter can be used to assign students with roles of characters from a book and have them create tweets as the character from the book. This will allow students to put themselves in the character's shoes and have fun with it. This role-based task could also be used to create a blogger account. Each student would be asked to blog as the assigned character from the book. This would encourage students to be more creative and more engaged in their writing. As the teacher, I would also create my own blog page where I write as one of the characters for two reasons: staying current with writing techniques and to provide my students with an exemplar with what their task is. Shakespeare’s books, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet and would be great to use for this writing technique.

Thank you for visiting my blog, I hope you find these resources useful and make sure to WRITE a comment to let me know how you would implement them in your classes.

References: 

Fake Twitter.  November 6, 2019. Fake Tweet.  https://faketweeter.com/

NWP. November 6, 2019. 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing. https://www.nwp.org/cs/public /print/resource/922

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2006). The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 Language. Toronto: Author

 Pinterest.  November 6, 2019. Fiction Book Reports. https://www.pinterest.ca/natalieregier /fiction-book-reports/

Pinterest. November 6, 2019. IRC Brock University. https://www.pinterest.ca/ircbrock/