Snapshots of Writing
For the past few weeks my students have been diligently working on narratives. For this particular piece of writing I asked my students to think about a memory of something they would never forget. It could be sad, happy, exciting, or funny. We talked about a hunting experience, a holiday event, and when loved one were in the hospital.
As my students worked through their writing piece, we talked about several elements that make a good narrative. Needless to say, I could not cover all areas and topics in the time I was requesting my students to produce a piece of writing. We focused on:
- Character Development
- Dialogue
- Time Order
- Sensory Details
Furthermore, we also took a look at humor in writing which was a lot of fun and the students enjoyed the activities that went along with learning about humor. What did they take away? Being funny is hard! Students received their first taste of Writable when we worked on using homophones to create funny phrases. For instance, the bike was leaning against the garage wall because it was too tired. My students rolled their eyes at my corny joke, but understood the concept. I created a short rubric/checklist for them to use in Writable and they “rated” if the phrases their classmates came up with were actually funny or not.
After learning about a few elements of narrative writing, my students started to slowly implement and polish the elements into their own writing. It was then I had my students put their narratives into Writable for review and feedback. First, I was a bit surprised that students can’t import their writing into Writable from a Google Doc. My students had to cut and paste and it seems like an unnecessary step in my opinion. Hopefully Writable can change this in their platform to make it easier for students to import and export the writing.
Besides importing writing already completed, I wish that Writable allowed teachers to add more checklists after students have started. My students began with a basic narrative rubric that addressed the areas we had covered and after our first peer reviews I wanted to add another rubric/checklist to address a more specific area with my student’s writing. When I went to go add it on to the assignment, it said it could not be added because students had already submitted some of their writing. It led to me just pulling up the checklist on the projector, which wasn’t ideal for my 6th graders to give each other feedback.
Even though there have been a few hiccups with 6th graders doing their narratives, I have felt positive overall about the feedback they have been receiving for their writing. It is a plus that students don’t know who exactly is looking at their writing. This eliminates students always migrating towards their friends or the same people every time they are asked to revise and edit. Students have enjoyed using the platform and they expressed how easy it is to use. On the teacher side, Writable has forced me to reflect more on how I am delivering my instruction to the students. I am now going to be more deliberate in breaking down the writing that my students are doing so they don’t feel so overwhelmed by a big list of guidelines. Baby steps!
Quoting the words of Troy Hicks, “We will keep on, keeping on!”
