But who, in reality, has the time to create those interesting journal prompts, especially if you journal every day. Here is a solution that a colleague of mine came up with...
Every day, put up a random, interesting photo. It can be a setting, a person, an animal, ANYTHING (school appropriate, of course). Students write a section of a short story every day that has to do with that photo. Soon, with only 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class, students have a solid short story. If you keep the photos random (or create a PowerPoint with several random ones), you might even get the reaction of "What am I supposed to do with that?!" This makes me happy :)
Imagine going from this....
To this the very next day...
This is how he does it...
- 12 school day cycle, on average - 3 days of photos and 1 day of revision X 3.
- Day 1 has at least 1 person in the photo, real or fictional, and that person becomes to central character to the students' stories.
- From there, he just puts whatever interests him that particular day - here are 2 sites that could provide very interesting material...
- Revision days follow the RADaR method, and it's either an individual or a partner activity.
- He floats around the room offering suggestions... but mostly, he lets the kids use their creative brains to make the connections themselves - and we all know making connections is not necessarily easy for some students.
It's really nice because after about 3 weeks of bellringers, the students have a solid narrative that they spent (on average) 90 minutes drafting and 30 minutes revising. How often are you going to get students to write that long - and with almost complete attention?
No comments:
Post a Comment