Writing is significantly important to personal growth. For years I've been trying to "find time" to incorporate journaling in my English classroom. This year, I decided to bite the bullet and make it a priority. Students journal for 5 minutes daily. My district requires students in all English courses to read for 20 minutes daily. While there have been studies about maintaining a SSR (Sustained Silent Reading or Self-Selected Reading) journal, there is evidence that the journal proves very little value in the long run, especially if students are not critically analyzing or responding to the text. Since we do critical analysis and connections to the literature we read together, I decided to allow my students the opportunity to free write daily after reading. At times, they complete "focused free writes" on what they have read, literary connections to society, or content specific "free writes," the point this semester has been to spend 5 uninterrupted minutes writing. Students receive credit for participation and NEVER are docked points inaccuracy, misspellings, or off-topic content. I want them to enjoy writing and think metacognitively. The result? Thus far, students have been submitting more thought-provoking essays and prompt responses. There also seems to be more significant correlation between literature and the connections to societies past, present, and future.
Step One of my 20 Time Process: Watch the YouTube video in class and then without any discussion among peers, write for 5 minutes on anything and everything that is "Obvious to you. Amazing to others." Homework for Day One (adapted from the 20TimeinEducation website):
Step One of my 20 Time Process: Watch the YouTube video in class and then without any discussion among peers, write for 5 minutes on anything and everything that is "Obvious to you. Amazing to others." Homework for Day One (adapted from the 20TimeinEducation website):
As part of my paperless efforts and because my district is 1:1, I am able to communicate with my students through their school email accounts and Google Drive. I shared all of our resources in a "View Only" format on Drive. In red bold and at the top of the document, I ask students to go to "File" and "Make a Copy" for their own usage and annotations. There are some documents they share back with me and others they just maintain for their own records.
*Special note for iPad users. You should ask your students to use "Desktop Version" available through Safari and not the Drive app. The desktop version helps with initial navigation through the file share process.*
I decided that we would spend Fridays working on our 20 Time. So each Friday, I shared a document on Google Drive advising the expectations for work that day and over the weekend. This information was also shared on my class wiki.
Step Two, Week Two of our 20 Time Process: During week 2, I explained that the project does not have a specific trajectory. We begin with our passion, our intrinsic motivation, and see where it leads us. I asked students to identify the passion they wish to explore. We began with the question, "What would happen if..." and I gave them several directions to inquire.
Based on the examples above, I asked students to create 5 other inquiry questions to further research and write their first blog post. I suggested they create a blog through Blogger since they already have Gmail accounts, but some decided on WordPress as they had previous experience using it for other courses.
*Special note for iPad users. You should ask your students to use "Desktop Version" available through Safari and not the Drive app. The desktop version helps with initial navigation through the file share process.*
I decided that we would spend Fridays working on our 20 Time. So each Friday, I shared a document on Google Drive advising the expectations for work that day and over the weekend. This information was also shared on my class wiki.
Step Two, Week Two of our 20 Time Process: During week 2, I explained that the project does not have a specific trajectory. We begin with our passion, our intrinsic motivation, and see where it leads us. I asked students to identify the passion they wish to explore. We began with the question, "What would happen if..." and I gave them several directions to inquire.
- What would happen if I used my passion in the community?
- What would happen if I wanted to pursue my passion in college?
- What would happen if I wanted to make a job out of my passion?
Based on the examples above, I asked students to create 5 other inquiry questions to further research and write their first blog post. I suggested they create a blog through Blogger since they already have Gmail accounts, but some decided on WordPress as they had previous experience using it for other courses.