Activities

1. Brainstorm situation in which you use writing in your daily life.

1. Construct written responses in a blog format in response to a classroom activity.

3. Create a document in Google documents and share it with a peer for the purpose of collaboration.
   
   
4. Analyze characterization or theme (or any other literary element) found in a text using social media-influenced format to demonstrate understanding.

Answer Key/Rubric

1. Student will list ways he/she writes every day.  When students are asked if they write, they often do not recognize that they do write in multiple modes throughout the day.  They may confuse “writing” with academic writing of essays.  Helping students to see that they do write in many modes (including texting, social media use, drawing, making videos, etc.) can help them to see they already have the capacity to write.  They may just need help in transferring those skills to academic writing.  When students develop confidence as writers, they will produce stronger writing.
   
   
2. Student will become familiar with the blog format to compose written responses to a classroom-based activity.  Teachers can set up a safe blog using numerous formats (Blogger, Weebly[AW1] , etc…) and pose questions on the blog.  Students can be expected to respond at designated times (daily, weekly).  Student responses can then be used to begin class or to make new points.  Research has shown that dialogue is an extremely important component to classroom culture yet many students may not want to speak up in class.  A blog allows every student an equal chance at participation and voicing their views.
   
   
3. Student will create a document in Google documents/Drive and then share that document with one peer.  This collaboration feature will allow both students to write on the document at the same time.  Through editing/track changes, the progress each student has made toward the final product is visible.  Students can work on the document in class or at completely separate locations via Google Drive. 
   
   
4. Depending on the text being explored in class, students can use any social media-inspired format to demonstrate their understanding of characterization, theme, or any other literary device being explored.  For example, students can create a Facebook page for a character (useful examples are found here:  http://www.classtools.net/FB/home-page).  Students can create a Twitter feed of a designated number of tweets, including hashtags on a standard Word document or handwritten on a piece of paper.  Students can create an Instagram page for a character using Word or merely written on a piece of paper.  Students can create a character’s iPod playlist in Word and discuss why the character would have the song on his/her playlist.  This multimodal, 21^st century literacy approach encourages students to bring their out-of-school literacies into the classroom to help them better understand the topics discussed in class.