Noticing and Note

What do you do when you notice students are writing to "be done" instead of writing with true thinking, quality or depth? Stop. Focus on the essentials. But how? Recently, my students were falling into a trap of writing pitiful blogs about the books they had read. Blog after blog included blanket statements such as "This is a great book, you should read it." "I loved this book and all the books from this author." "This is an awesome book." No details, little information about why they loved the book, why it was a great book, and why one should read it. They could easily copy and paste their posts from one blog to the next!

So, I stopped. I needed the students to discover what was missing in their writing. So, we spent class time exploring well-written blogs--some professional, and some not. I simply asked them to make a list of the things that they see included in the blogs. What made them interesting? Why? How do these blogs differ from theirs? Then, students responded on a Padlet, sharing their "noticings" and notes. I encouraged them to go back into their responses to give examples. 

When all was said and done, students developed a list of how to improve their own blogs. They made plans as to what they should try to do differently to make their blogs more interesting. This story is still unfinished, but returning to the essentials and helping students make their own discoveries about their own work seems to be inspiring them to push a little harder, and dig deep to write more interesting posts about their books. Stay tuned!