ENGL 479 – Middle School Writing

Title: Witness
Author: Karen Hesse
Grade: 7th-8th
Age: 12-14
Classroom use:
-introduction to verse novels
-ways to incorporate multiple characters into literature in a unique way
-importance of expressing characters personalities within literature
-demonstrating character perspectives & their interpretations within literature
-examples of intertextual references
-literatures ability to be classified in various different categories

Going through school, my teachers would always assign research papers like discussed above and on rare occasions I had teachers that would allow our class a little freedom and the ability to take the writing assignment into our own hands. This change in instruction was definitely refreshing; however, it was much harder on us as students because we had become so accustomed to having someone tell us what to do.

As future elementary teachers we can take the knowledge that we have gained from our various courses here at Longwood, as well as our prior knowledge from the experiences we had as students ourselves in order to develop at an early age a greater appreciation within our students for writing prior to their arrival at the age where mandated research papers are more essential to the writing process.

As technology continues to develop and spread further amongst society, people are becoming more and more reliant on it. Technology has become an essential part of our everyday lives and it is becoming increasingly prevalent amongst the rising generations. In order to keep our students engaged in our classrooms we need to incorporate the use of digital writing as much as possible. Students will find themselves more interested in what we are teaching and they will consequently retain more of the information being given to them. A quote that I found very fitting to this discussion about keeping up with societal changes within our classrooms can be found below.

“If we teach today as we taught yesterday,

we rob our children of tomorrow.” -John Dewey

Examples of RAFT assignments to use to incorporate technology into your classroom:

-Create an audio recording

-Create a computer program

-Create a video montage

-Create a musical composition

-Create an online survey

-Create a commercial

Ideas:

-survey collecting feedback on various individuals past writing
experiences
-lesson plan to use in future class
-brochure discussing the qualities that lead to a good writing
experience for students

We’re going to be making a comic strip out of this. The comic strip shows that rather than completing a research paper, the students are going to conduct a wax museum to display what they have learned. The wax museum will be more memorable and allow the students to grasp a better understanding of the material that they are learning about.