one best thing
This week I read a portion of the iBook One Best Thing. The portion that I read was "Write to Change the World: Challenge Based Learning for Persuasive Writing" by Katie Morrow. The beginning of this book talks about how students can "change the world" through their persuasive writing. It said that students choose topics that personally matter to them and try to write about it in a way that will change people's perceptions, therefore they are writing to change the world. I never thought about persuasive writing in that sense before, but I like thinking of persuasive writing from that point of view now. Katie Morrow says that students find more value and meaning with Challenge Based Learning. She said with Challenge Based Learning, learning is authentic for students and real. When writing persuasive, this book says to start with an Essential Question of what they want their whole persuasive writing to lead back to. When the students brainstorm their ideas for their persuasive writing and essential question, they use Post-it notes to write them on. I use Post-it notes for almost everything, so I love this idea! While students created their persuasive writings, they put all of their ideas in the Challenge Tracker, which is similar to Google Docs. Throughout writing, Katie did a lot of guided ideas with the students, such as Skype sessions, class trips, and an analysis of "letters to the editor" in a local newspaper. Towards the end of the project, students would craft solutions for their projects. The last thing that students did at the end of the project was create video documentaries and publish them online for everybody to see. This idea for persuasive writing is awesome, fun, and creative for older students!
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About the Author: Katie Morrow teaches 8th grade English and serves as her district's Technology Integration Specialist at O'Neill Public Schools in O'Neill, Nebraska. Katie is also on the Advisory Boards for the Apple Distinguished Educators program and Challenge Based Learning, along with teaching graduate courses in technology integration. Feel free to follow her on Twitter and check out her educational tweets!
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