Chocolate Social and Environmental REsponsibility

This would be an interesting discussion for persuasive writing and responsibility. Especially before Easter.

There are also some interesting steps as to how they classify these. Would be good to follow up with research on the company and their website to see if they acknowledge any issues and how they are improving them.

 

 

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Class choice of reading book

So ... choice can allow students to choose what they want to do which generally leads to them being more engaged and interested in what we are doing in class. Of course it can backfire too so you have to be reasonably prepared to either change the votes slightly or only offer what you are happy to teach.

I decided this term that I wanted to do a compare and contrast with a novel and a movie.

I asked the students to suggest books that had movie adaptations which we would vote from. I added in some suggestions as well.

The students came up with some fantastic choices including:
- The lion, the witch and the wardrobe
- Owls of Ga'Hoole
- Bridge to Terabithia
- Coraline

- His Dark Materials
- Eragon
- Harry Potter
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Charlottes Web
- The Polar Express
- James and the Giant Peach
- Ratatouille
- The Witches
- Gulliver's Travels

The students then voted. It came down to a close call between Coraline and Percy Jackson - with Percy Jackson winning by 2. Of course we did full preferential voting.

So currently I am creating an amazing unit as I teach it for this book and movie.

Peer Editing

I have been teaching the kids to peer edit. This involves a long process of discussing how we self-edit initially and what we are looking for when we do edit. It also involves some roleplays and discussion of how we provide feedback, what types of feedback we can provide and inappropriate comments and ways to talk to each other.

That always is an interesting conversation as the kids can immediately identify how not to talk to each other and have heaps of fun role playing that. A poster that I use is included in the product at the bottom of the post with the ideas surrounding what kids should or shouldn't do when in the role of the writer or editor.

I think constructive editing and feedback is the key. I teach my students that they need to look for certain errors within the document that all writers make but they also need to look for ways that you think as an audience to the piece of writing it could be improved and provide that feedback. I also stress that they need to say one thing that they like about the writing, this puts a positive note so that the writer doesn't feel like they are being bombarded with negative criticism. This is included in the product at the bottom of the post, in the format of stars or triangles.

There is no point, and I stress this to the students that we ever say someone's writing is bad and everyone has things they need to improve upon.

Now at the point that I am at, I can send the students just outside the classroom (any excuse to sit in the sun or open air) and they know how to edit each other's work and feedback to each other appropriately to make the time spent doing it worthwhile.

It saves you a bit of time, so you don't need to edit and feedback on the simple errors, it also builds up cooperation among the students and I have found some of the better students pair with some of the less able students and enjoy helping them improve.

It doesn't matter generally who pairs with who, because throughout the writing process they will pair multiple times with different people as everyone has different feedback to give. I do make them pair up with different people each time, not friends all the time and may given them a "Find someone who ..." question to start them off, if it takes too long or I am finding the same people being left out all the time.

I have also got them to write notes on post-it notes to give to the student, or if we are just sharing work around then they post it on the work and pass it on. This way the student gets their piece of work back with multiple positive, questions and comments on the back.

I have put up a product to support this, that I use in my classroom. It has a peer editing check list so that they can self edit their work and then also peer edit someone else's. I have put up a poster with some guidelines while undertaking this. I have also put in the stars/triangles that I use to scaffold peer feedback.

Do you use peer feedback or editing in your class? How does it work?