Just as we have discussed
and read about the importance of reading meaningful text across all content
areas, Strong’s chapter “Designing Assignments and Rubrics” explains the
importance of quality writing assignments that can be applied to all contents
as well. As a student who always dreaded
long writing assignments, it was interesting to read about how to design
creative, thought provoking writing assignments. Referring to the CRAFT acronym and the ten
design principles presented by Strong will be helpful in creating writing
assignments that will be more interesting than the traditional paper, for both
students and teachers.
The chapter provided many
great examples that helped me to envision how I could use CRAFT when designing
assignments in my future classroom. As someone
who hopes to be a biology teacher, some of the examples that really stuck out
for me were a letter from Mendel to a colleague explaining certain genetic
principles, a poem from a Sequoia tree to the sun about photosynthesis, a news
release by a news writer to the public about global warming, and a diary entry
from a book trout to itself about the effects of acid rain. All of these
examples had me thinking how much more motivating it would be for students to
be able to be creative with their writing and how much more interesting it
would be for teachers to design these types of assignments and see what their
students come up with.
Strong also suggested
giving students a choice in what they would like to write. Not only would students be more willing to
write about something they get to choose, but it would provide teachers with a
variety of student work.
As a biology student, how
much more creative and exciting would it be to write an angry letter from a
native species in an ecosystem to an invasive species that is taking over its
habitat than to write a five page essay on the effects of invasive species? As
a biology teacher, how much more interesting would it be to read a bunch of
these different letters than a bunch of similar essays?
Hi Gemma,
ReplyDeleteYou picked great examples for (C)RAFTs and it's easy to imagine how fun it would be for all concerned -- including the teacher reading the results. I really like these RAFT things for these types of short assignments, but for the longer ones I didn't feel so sure. If you need to write a Rubric for a RAFT...I don't know...takes all the magic out of it for me.
Denise, I also really liked these RAFT/CRAFT things. I think if the rubric is used the right way it will still allow the magic to happen. Rubrics don't necessarily have to limit what the student can do with the assignment. I see them as more of a guide for grading. As a student, I have always liked to look at rubrics and see exactly what I did right or wrong on an assignment and as a teacher I think rubrics will be really helpful with grading. Hopefully, if the rubric is written and used the right way it will still allow students to be creative with these types of fun writing assignments.
DeleteI think it's really cool that you created an original prompt at the end to convey the kind of Biology teacher that you want to become. I don't think any of us want to be the boring, discouraging teachers that Strong presented in his scenario. Creative writing prompts are endless no matter what content area we specialize in, which you mentioned. I thought I was creative but after reading some examples of RAFT prompts, I was blown away. How fun did they sound? I think if I had assignments like this in math, social studies, and even English, I would have produced better work.
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