Over the past two weeks, we have been focusing on the Writing strand in our Literacy class. Though I may not consider myself much of a writer now, I have always loved to write. In high school and elementary school, I could always be caught writing short stories, poems, and even songs in my spare time. (N.B. The songs were not well written, but they still helped me to channel all of my "teenage angst"!) Through this blog post, I will discuss some resources and articles that can help students better understand writing strategies, how to think of themselves as authors, and some of my own personal anecdotes about writing!
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| "Girl Writing" Retrieved from Clipart.com |
In Week 7 of my Literacy course, I explored a writing resource called BoomWriter. As mentioned in the article "A Brilliant Resource For Students Who Think They Hate Writing", BoomWriter is a program that allows students to collaborate and write a story together, while developing their vocabulary and non-fiction writing and storytelling skills. This resource links directly to the Ontario Language Curriculum by helping students to develop and organize their ideas, work on their sentence fluency, be aware of their word choice, and work on their interconnected skills, for example. BoomWriter has other programs within it, such as StoryWriter, which is used to help students develop their understanding of storytelling devices and elements, and ProjectWriter which is used to further students' knowledge of key concepts through the dissection of entire units into smaller learning groups. This is a great resource to use in any grade, and it is something that I am definitely planning on using in my future classroom!
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| "BoomWriter". Retrieved from Pinterest.com |
Though many students, myself included, have used this writing model, not many are familiar with what it stands for and what exactly it entails. The IMSCI model (Inquiry, Modeling, Shared Writing, Collaborative Writing, Independent Writing) helps students to improve their writing instruction through a scaffolding writing strategy, using different "checkpoints" along the way to help them progress, and eventually have a final result (E.g. A story, narrative, memoir, etc.) This resource is very valuable to both pre-service and in-service teachers, as I believe that it will help them in many different school subjects (not just language!). I think that this is a great resource to use among teaching partners, as it will encourage collaboration among different students on a writing and personal level.
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| "IMSCI Model". Retrieved from Pinterest.com |
As a student, I always felt that I needed more structure, or at least guidance, in my writing and writing styles. I was very good at independent work, but needed more collaboration to help me sort out my ideas. Through BoomWriter, and the IMSCI Model, I believe that students will be more aware of their own writing style and conventions through peer support and editing. I'm not saying that all students need to work on their collaborative strategies, but it is something that I lacked as an elementary and high school student, and wish that my teachers would have helped me with, or would have at least given me resources to work with. While perusing the internet, I managed to find other resources that help students to work collaboratively, such as a newspaper generator, or a Wordcloud to brainstorm.
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| "Collaboration WordCloud". Retrieved from Dreamtime.com |
Writing comes in many different forms, and it is up to us as educators (and future educators!) to be mindful of the many unique ways our students can present their work to us. Most of all, we need to be encouraging and flexible with our students, as we wish for them to take an interest in writing, and we must remember that we are still learning, too!
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