Research to Creative Writing....My favorite!

In our current 7th grade English Language Arts Curriculum, we move from Research Unit to our Creative Writing Unit.  Now THAT's an interesting and difficult transition.  : )

As a writer myself, I try to build a love for writing in my students all year long.  Standardized testing and writing to prompts makes that difficult sometimes.  That's why I LOVE our Creative Writing Unit!  My students constantly tell me they enjoy this unit because of the freedom of topic.  Me too!

This year, I asked my students to create an original short story.  Not to overwhelm them, I did brief mini-lessons on how to write character descriptions, develop conflict and hooks, create flow to a story, and build a connection with readers.  Students ran with it!  I only had two weeks, so I had to start small.  I used the book Outlining Your Novel as a guide for some of my mini-lessons.  Students love learning from real authors and not text books.

I feel like this unit allowed students to end the year with an open mind and creative brain.  They really struggled at first to just let go of what I expected them to write and embraced their own creativity and imagination.  I used free writes and prompt sentence starters to get them thinking with LOTS of choice involved.  They could then use any of their free writes for their stories or start something new.  It did wonders to open them up to the possibilities before them on the page.

Alongside our writing, we read a novel to use a guide to our own writing.  Some classes read Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life by James Patterson, and others read Half Upon a Time by James Riley.  These were PERFECT for helping students understand how to develop believable characters and conflicts so readers can relate to them.

What's Happening Now
Students are simply using paper to create a cover for their stories and publish to me.  Students are turning in their work today!  I can't wait to see their final copies!  Hopefully some of them will let me share here.

Check back for student examples.

Maas Out.

Research Website Examples

As promised... Here are a few basic student research website examples I promised from my last blog post.

Review:  Students learned basic online researching skills.  Students selected their research topics based on our novel, The Giver.  We worked through mini-lessons on writing research questions (tough for 7th grade!), searching Google and how Google searchers work, collecting research that answered their research questions, then making connections to the novel we had just completed.

Students were fascinated!

We used www.bibme.org to complete their Works Cited page and then began creating their informational website.  As mentioned in the previous blog, we used Weebly for Education to create the websites because it is user friendly and has security features for education.

Below are examples of the basic finished product of some of my 7th graders.  This was a SHORT 2 week project, so not in depth.  They are raw with NO revisions by me!  Pure 7th grade work.

In order to view the websites, you will need the password:  maas.

Example 1: 
Topic:  Alzheimer's
Link:  http://alzdiseaseinfo.weebly.com/

Example 2:
Topic: Gender Roles
Link:  http://stopgenderroles.weebly.com/reflection.html

Example 3:
Topic: Human Trafficking
Link:  http://humantraffackingsadbuttrue.weebly.com/connections.html

Enjoy!
Maas Out!

Doctopus, Weebly & Research PBL...What I've Learned!

2 Week Research PBL Reflection

I used our Research PBL to test out technology I have been wanting to use but haven't.  Students selected a topic that was related to the novel we just read, The Giver.  Their end product was an informational website.

Doctopus
I started off our Research Unit using Doctopus.  This is an Add-On in Google Drive.  We are 1:1 with iPads, so I learned A LOT about the differences between using it on a laptop vs an iPad.  There are some important differences to understand BEFORE beginning your project.  I learned the hard way...you're welcome!  lol

Use this LINK to access Doctopus Directions.

Benefits of Doctopus That I Love:

• Students can share documents/spreadsheets for collaboration.
• Students are working on the same document at the same time. - NO WAIT TIME!
• I can see ALL of the work being done, which students are doing the work and when, and leave feedback real time!!!! WOW and LOVE!
• Students can work together from home if they have internet access.  
• It does NOT matter what type of device is used (mostly-see differences below).  Students don't need the same device every day.

Differences Between iPad and Laptop using Doctopus: (things I wish I knew BEFORE I started)

• You cannot share a Google Presentation on the iPad.  You can only share a document or spreadsheet.
• The Google Drive App is really only good to use if students are working on text.  You cannot add pictures or other advanced items using the app.  This severely limits the use on an iPad.
• DO NOT add tables to your document.  I used table to try to help students organize their research they collected, but the tables did not show up using the Google Drive App.  -- Even better (grin) - If they opened Google Drive on the web, they could SEE the tables, but NOT Edit them.  I tried Desktop version and Mobile version. - Mobile version worked for a day, then stopped. -- So really... ONLY TEXT... nothing fancy for things to go smoothly.
• Students could not add images as mentioned above.

Basically, I wish I had laptops for all students to use during this part of the process.  However, it would have been fine if I had known a few things in advance and could adjust for the iPad differences.

Weebly

Students used Weebly to create their Informational Website end product.   FREE for a certain # of websites.  Use this LINK to access Weebly for Education.

I used two of my own emails to create two Educator Weebly accounts.  You get 40, 5-Page student websites with a single account.  At secondary, I needed at least 80 for partner groups.  I entered the usernames and passwords for my students then printed them for each group.  It didn't take more than 30 minutes to setup 80 usernames and passwords.  Well worth the time.

Students created a 5-page website with their research.  They basically copied and pasted what was on their Research Outline in Doctopus (Google Drive) with some tweaking.  As 7th graders, we focused more on researching skills.  Weebly worked great on the iPad except for changing the pictures on the themed, template pages.  They could add NEW pictures easily, but they could not change those that existed within the template.  A laptop cart for one day would easily get around this issue.  My teaching partner and I shared a laptop cart.

I would highly recommend this product for student use.  You can keep the websites private and require a password to access them after they have been published.  Perfect for even younger students.

All in all, this was a good process. Students are presenting and evaluating each other today using Google Forms.  Will post website examples in the next few days.

Maas Out!