Summary
“This is the first day I have liked being in school!” a student shared. This quote encapsulates this lesson. My two RTI 8th Grade English classes began writing back and forth with pen pals in a 3rd grade classroom in Louisa County using Google Docs. The 8th grade students wrote a persuasive essay to prepare for the Writing SOL, and the 3rd grade students gave feedback on use of a hook in the introduction and topics sentences in the body paragraphs. The 3rd grade teacher and I planned a trip for the students to meet through a writing workshop that the 8th grade students would create. The 8th grade students picked groups to work in to build writing workshop stations to teach the 3rd graders. After the students picked groups, they picked a writing topic that aligned with the 3rd grade Writing SOLs. The station had to have an introduction to the topic and a practice that included technology. All of the information was housed on a class-built website. The 8th grade created video previews of their stations to send to the 3rd grade. The 3rd graders picked the stations they wanted to visit the most after viewing the video previews. The 3rd graders visited Pocahontas and rotated through four different writing stations. The 8th grade took self-evaluations on the visit while the 3rd grade wrote reflections on their favorite parts of the visit. The classes used a discussion board on the class website and Skype to follow up with each other.
TIPC Ratings
Students had to select the most appropriate tools and sources to assemble information to present to another group of students. Students had to create applications for the assembled information for them to teach a group of 3rd grade students and for the group of 3rd grade students to use. The students had to reflect on their use of information to teach another group of students.
Students used appropriate technology to introduce themselves to a younger group of students in another county. Students self-selected groups to create workshop stations. Students had to work together to create an introduction of a topic and an independent practice for other students to complete. They had to choose technology that would best suit a workshop atmosphere. They had to figure out how to best break up the workload within the group. Students reflected on their group’s collaboration and contribution to the group environment in order to inform future projects.
Students had to select tools that would be the most helpful for teaching other students in a workshop environment. The students had to use critical thinking and problem solving to troubleshoot when problems arose. The students had to reflect on their role as a critical thinker and problem solver to inform future projects.
Students had to use researched information and prior knowledge to create a teaching tool. Students were responsible for taking risks to support their teaching. The students demonstrated this by tweaking their method of presentation during the workshop to better suit the environment after reflecting on the first group rotation. The students had to reflect on their creativity and its effectiveness in order to inform future projects.
Student Artifact
WritingWorkshop from HCPS Instructional Technology on Vimeo.
Download Files
7842_WritingWorkshopWithLouisa
Contents:
- 7842 Lesson Plan
- Workshop Website
- Reflection Form
- Thank you message from Louisa students
