Helping Students See the Point of Writing

The title of this post is also going to be the name of a workshop I'm going to give soon. For this workshop, I'd been thinking about so many activities I had done before, but today, however, this one worked so incredibly that I just couldn't give its post some other name.

Last night, I was thinking about how I would teach nine-year-olds the lesson found on pages 130 and 131 of Spotlight on English 3 (Thomas Bilíngue 5th grade). You can see the pages in the picture below. It is a writing lesson. They are supposed to write an editorial at the end.

I was sure that the best way to allow such young students to learn a little and be engaged in this lesson of mine would be to have them experience the real thing. After all, if writing isn't real, it means nothing to the students. I googled a bit and found this cool website with interesting Google Doc newspaper templates. Then, the idea stroke me.

Still in class, as a pre-writing activity, we sat on the floor and I showed them the template I decided to use (the second one on that web page), asking them whether they knew what that was. They looked at it and easily came up with the word "newspaper". We had a chat about what an editorial is and how it must be based on facts, not opinions. Then, I had them do some mind-mapping on a poster with these slips I printed and cut out. They came up with the name of their newspaper and the facts to support the topics they wrote about. I brought some suggestions of topics and they decided which one they would write about.

Once they had their editorial jotted down on their poster, I took them to the Resource Centre at the main branch. They accessed a shortened link I had made for them to access the collaborative Google Doc (bit.do/tb5editorial) and started working on their editorial columns. They did everything: they chose the name of the newspaper, they wrote their columns, they selected the pictures on it. Please, access the link and see what it looks like now.

I honestly don't feel that I had a lot of options and I decided to be innovative. To me, this was the only option. I was definitely going to make my students create a newspaper and write an editorial on a collaborative Google Doc. Only after the lesson had finished, when I saw what they had made, did I realise how amazing all of it had been. The process. The experience they went through. How they collaborated with each other by proofreading what their buddies were writing. After all, my students...

• made something and learned as they made it.
• produced something unique and in their own pace.
• got engaged in an authentic and meaningful activity.
• collaborated with each other by alerting their peers on punctuation and spelling mistakes (21st century skill).
• had their voice heard by creating something that can be published and read by other people.

Now, I'm trying to find a way to have the newspapers printed out so that my students can take a sample home and so that we can also make their work available in the Resource Centre for people to pick and read.