How are we going to motivate students to want to learn how to write in a world in which AI can now write for them? At Short Answer, we think about this…a lot. We discuss it in depth in our writing & AI workshops and are factoring it into the AI features we’re building now (more on that soon 😉).
We know writing is vital. It’s required for learning and communicating in all content areas (Applebee, 1984). It improves our students’ ability to read (Graham, 2010). It can make us feel better by helping us process thoughts and emotions (Smyth, 1998). At a high level, it even helps us develop and communicate our identity (Ivanic, 1998). As teachers, we know this. We know this, in large part, because we’ve experienced it. Our students often haven’t.
If we want our students to believe in the value of writing, we can’t simply tell them it’s important. We have to be intentional about designing learning that allows them to experience the power of writing. At Short Answer, that means creating social writing experiences where students share their work with others. To that end, here are three ideas for making Short Answer even more social in your classroom.
1. Pair Ups
Have students sign in to Short Answer together. Then, they will be tasked with constructing their responses together. This challenges them to communicate with each other about what an ideal response looks like and negotiate ideas together. Just as importantly, when it comes to the comparison process, it then challenges students to slow down and talk through which peer responses deserve each success criteria.
2. Think-pair-share reflections
When students receive their individualized feedback report after an All-In activity, have them partner up with someone next to them. Write a few discussion questions on the board:
“Did you agree with your feedback? Why or why not?”
“If you were to revise your response, how would you do so?”
“Share with your partner how you would revise your response. Be prepared to share this with the class.”
Have students discuss in pairs, then share with the class what they discussed.
3. Class-level revisions
In Battle Royale, the class selects one exemplar response based on the success criteria. To close class, have the students copy-paste that response into a Google/Word Doc. As an exit ticket, have students make one revision to that response to make it even stronger. This gives the student who wrote the exemplar response some shine while also communicating a growth mindset by showing that we can always improve our writing.
Have more ideas on creating a more social writing experience for our students? We’d love to meet and discuss! Feel free to use the button below.
