Category: Writing

One of my favorite classroom management tools is Turnitin, especially with the addition of Revision Assistant–one of the most comprehensive virtual writing assistants available to students (here’s my review of Revision Assistant).

Well, now Turnitin has launched Feedback Studio. It’s a revamp of their flagship product, with some twists:

Today, Turnitin announced a new version of its flagship product with a focus on ease-of-use, accessibility for students, and new mobile features to support instruction in the modern classroom. Formerly known as “Turnitin,” the new version is being renamed “Turnitin Feedback Studio” and will be made available to its two million educators and 30 million students on an opt-in basis beginning today. Click to Tweet.

Feedback Studio offers:

• Great feedback, fast
• Anytime, anywhere learning. Responsive design works on PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
• Accessibility improvements
• Unparalleled content coverage. Enhanced technology intelligently and rapidly crawls and indexes the most relevant and up-to-date content on the Web, including content hidden behind Javascript, expanding Turnitin’s vast content database in support of academic integrity.

Turnitin Feedback Studio will be available to all current Turnitin users and is available on a per-student, annual subscription basis to new customers.

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Comics are a robust medium for sharing empathy and perspective in a story. It’s equally appropriate for fiction and nonfiction and does a solid job of reinforcing Common Core standards related to writing in a fun, agile way that appeals to students.

When your students write with comics, they’ll follow a few simple rules:

• Each panel includes detail to support the plot, characters, and setting.
• Each panel flows into the next, just as story paragraphs and scenes flow.
• Images, text, bubbles, and captions communicate ideas, story, and empathy.

Here are three great options for writing with comics:

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April is National Poetry Month. For thirty days, we celebrate the value and joy that poetry brings to our world.  According to the Academy of American Poets, the goals are:

• Highlight the extraordinary legacy and ongoing achievement of American poets
• Introduce more Americans to the pleasures of reading poetry
• Bring poets and poetry to the public in immediate and innovative ways
• Make poetry a more important part of the school curriculum
• Increase the attention paid to poetry by national and local media
• Encourage increased publication, distribution, and sales of poetry books
• Increase public and private philanthropic support for poets and poetry

All across the nation, school, teachers, students, libraries, and families celebrate by reading, writing, and sharing poetry. Here are fifteen websites that do all that and more. Share them with students on a class link page like the class internet start page, Symbaloo, or another method you’ve chosen to share groups of websites with students:

Acrostic Poems

From ReadWriteThink–students learn about acrostic poetry and how to write it

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As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I can’t convince my students to give up their paper and pencil. What’s a great reason that will resonate with them?

A: Digital writing is easier to edit. By a factor of infinity. Anyone who has tried to erase, smudge the notes, tear the paper, knows that the digital version of editing with a simple insert is miles ahead. Why force our students to use a method that is so inferior?

I was reminded of this attribute by efriend and fellow keyboarding advocate, Dr. Bill Morgan over at Keyboarding Arts Institute.

Plus, by middle school, with even a modicum of keyboard training, students type faster than they think (about 25-30 wpm). That makes it easier to keep up with the teacher as they are note-taking.

One more: Much easier to share digital notes and other writing.

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English teachers know the key to writing is rewriting, but getting students to do that has always been a challenge. That is, until I found Turnitin’s Revision Assistant. Revision Assistant makes rewriting easy to understand, self-directed,  and believe it or not–more fun. In fact, it uses features from the gamified classroom to encourage students to maximize the strength of their writing ‘signals’ by revising and editing. Geared for grades 6-12, it builds writing skill with suggestions that are formative in nature, well-explained, and based on tips from actual students who completed the same exercise.

The learning curve is shallow for both teachers and students–easily accomplished with minimal guidance, though Turnitin offers a variety of instructional videos to cover salient points. The goal is to aid students in recognizing their weaknesses and build on their strengths.

Here’s how it works:

• The teacher sets up their class dashboard and invites students to join via a Join code.

• The teacher shares one of the many grade- and topic-specific prompts (divided into three categories: argumentative, narrative, and informative) with students, including any required resources and special instructions. These prompts are aligned with Common Core and/or a variety of state standards.

• The student signs in to their Revision Assistant dashboard and locates the required writing assignment. They can pre-write their response if desired before moving into the first draft. A rubric is provided so students are clear about expectations.

• When ready, students request a ‘signal check’ to see how they’re doing. This provides color-coded feedback on language, focus, organization, and evidence with suggestions on how to improve what they have written. Students can request as many signal checks as they wish during the rewrite process. Improvement is reflected in an increased signal strength from a low of one bar to a high of four bars in each category.

• When students have completed the assignment, they submit it to the teacher (with an optional comment) who then reviews and grades it as fits the class environment (Revision Assistant does not assign a grade).
• The teacher can track each student submittal and download a spreadsheet of area-specific progress for the class.

Revision Assistant has an intuitive interface, a clean non-cluttered canvas, easy-to-use dashboards for both teachers and students, and no advertising. It is also part of the Turnitin family, a trusted name in student writing.

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Few people can sit down and start writing. Most of us hem and haw as we mentally walk through how to get from introduction to conclusion. It’s called ‘prewriting’ and students are no different. Where they diverge from you and I is they haven’t tested all the available methods for planning a story, constructing non-fiction, or building the evidence-based argument. It’s up to us–as their teachers–to introduce these alternatives so they can pick one best suited to their learning and communication style.

Disclaimer: These are presented in a random order because what works for your students will depend in large extent upon the writing method used in your school, whether its the 6+1 Traits, Common Core Writing Standards, or the tried-and-true who-what-when-where-why.

Brainstorm/Mindmap

Brainstorming, also called ‘mindmapping’, is a collaborative visual approach to thinking through and presenting ideas. It enables students to come up with many ideas without worrying about whether it’s realistic. It’s great for collaborative writing, note-taking, or an individual effort.

Here are basics for brainstorming in the classroom:

• There are no wrong answers.
• Get as many ideas as possible.
• Don’t evaluate ideas–just record them.
• Build on the suggestions of others.
• Stress quantity over quality–get as many ideas as possible. Sort them later.

There are many online tools that facilitate this process. If you’re looking for a webtool, try Inspiration, MindMeister, or another from this list. For iPads, try iBrainstorm, Ideament, or another from this list.

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Knowledge is meant to be shared. That’s what writing is about–taking what you know and putting it out there for all to see. When students hear the word “writing”, most think paper-and-pencil, maybe word processing, but that’s the vehicle, not the goal. According to state and national standards (even international), writing is expected to “provide evidence in support of opinions”, “examine complex ideas and information clearly and accurately”, and/or “communicate in a way that is appropriate to task, audience, and purpose”. Nowhere do standards dictate a specific tool be used to accomplish the goals.

In fact, the tool students select to share knowledge will depend upon their specific learning style. Imagine if you–the artist who never got beyond stick figures–had to draw a picture that explained the nobility inherent in the Civil War. Would you feel stifled? Would you give up? Now put yourself in the shoes of the student who is dyslexic or challenged by prose as they try to share their knowledge.

When you first bring this up in your class, don’t be surprised if kids have no idea what you’re talking about. Many students think learning  starts with the teacher talking and ends with a quiz. Have them take the following surveys:

• North Carolina State University’s learning style quiz 

Both are based on the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner’s iconic model for mapping out learning modalities such as linguistic, hands-on, kinesthetic, math, verbal, and art. Understanding how they learn explains why they remember more when they write something down or read their notes rather than listening to a lecture. If they learn logically (math), a spreadsheet is a good idea. If they are spatial (art) learners, a drawing program is a better choice.

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Here’s an excellent collection of great apps for your classroom — to cover writing, research, and assessment. You can even use all three on one project:

Storyboard That

Free; fee for education accounts 

Storyboard That is a leader among online digital storytelling tools thanks to its comic-based themes, clean layout, vast collection of story pieces, varied strip layouts, and intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Students map out ideas using a huge library of backgrounds, characters, text boxes, shapes, and images (with over 325 characters, 225 scenes, and 45,000 images).  With an education account, teachers also get teacher guides and lesson plans. 

Here’s how it works: Log into your account and Storyboard That automatically adapts to your device (whether it’s a desktop, Chromebook, or iPad). Select the layout you’d like, then add a background, characters, one or more props, and speech bubbles from Storyboard That’s collections. Each element can be resized, rotated, and repositioned to exactly suit your needs. Characters can also be adjusted for appearance, emotion, and action. You can even upload images and record a voice overlay (premium only) to narrate the story. Once finished, storyboards can be saved as PDFs, PowerPoints, and/or emailed out.

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Storyboard That is a leader among online digital storytelling tools thanks to its comic-based themes, clean layout, vast collection of story pieces, varied strip options, and intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Students can map out ideas, write stories, or relay events in a comic format using Storyboard That’s huge library of backgrounds, characters, text boxes, shapes, and images.  When you sign up as a teacher, you get a dashboard to manage students and support for Google sign-in. You also get teacher guides and lesson plans on subjects like English (Of Mice and Men), school social skills (like bullying), World History, US History, Special Education, and languages (like Teaching Spanish). Lesson plans include how-to steps, Common Core alignment, sample storyboard layouts, synopsis, and Essential Questions. 

Here’s how it works: Log into your account from any device (laptop, desktop–Mac or Windows–Chromebook, iPad, or even a smartphone) and Storyboard That automatically adapts to your device using its HTML5 responsive web design. Students can join with an access key supplied by the teacher–no email required–or be bulk-added by the administrator. Select the frame layout you’d like with any number of scenes, then add a background, characters, one or more props, and speech bubbles from Storyboard That’s image banks (of over 325 characters, 225 scenes, and over 45,000 images). Each element can be resized, rotated, and repositioned. Characters can be posed with flexibility at all joints, and adjusted for appearance and emotion. You can even upload images to use in the strip, add photos from the millions available through Photos for Class (including citations), and record a voice overlay (premium only) to narrate the story. Once finished, storyboards can be saved as PDFs, storyboard cells, PowerPoint presentations, and/or emailed out.

Beyond the traditional strip layout, Storyboard That offers graphic organizers such as a T-chart, a Grid, a Frayer Model, a Spider Map and a Timeline (premium and education account).This is great for visual learners who thrive on color and images.

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Collaboration is the new rigor in the classroom. Who hasn’t been mesmerized by children gathered at a table engaged in a high-level discussion, making shared decisions, and demonstrating deep, scaffolded learning? When students share organic ideas and peer review projects, they build authentic knowledge that everyone takes ownership in, but the saying is easier than the doing. You can’t just break students into groups and expect a collaborative workflow. It takes practice. The rudimentary teamwork availed by Google Docs and online tools like Subtext is a great start, but what’s better is projects that inspire, motivate, and teach students skills for speaking and listening.

Here are three activities I use in my classroom to achieve this goal:

Three Then Me

Every activity in your classroom includes how-to questions. Before answering, have students ask three classmates before asking you. For example, if they can’t find the tech tool they want, check with three neighbors before putting their hand. Kids love helping each other and spotlighting their talent. Not only does ‘Three then me’ get the student’s question answered faster, it engenders a sense of cooperation and collaboration in the class, that students are resources to each other.

A note of caution: This works best with self-correcting facts, like how to do something, but if it’s a definition or the spelling of a word, students could get the wrong answer and not know it. As you’re training students in ‘three then me’, remind them to evaluate answers, critically think about them before implementing, and trust their own judgment. Does it sound right? Does it fit what else they know about the question? If it does, go for it!

Educational Activities

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