Elisabeth Pölzleitner
How to Engage Students with Writing: Autonomous Writing Tasks in Secondary School
Even though Austrian students have to take standardized final exams, we need not bore them with all the writing prompts in our textbooks. The main goal of the new writing exam is to teach the leaners to write appropriate texts for a specific audience. This is best practiced in authentic, real-life situations and with a REAL audience, who will actually read the learners’ texts.
In this workshop, we will be looking at ways to create authentic situations where learners of all ages write about topics of their interest and share their writing with an audience. We’ll be looking at open formats that allow and encourage creativity and invite the leaners to take responsibility and ownership of their texts. Examples of the following projects will be presented and discussed:
How to Engage Students with Writing: Autonomous Writing Tasks in Secondary School
Even though Austrian students have to take standardized final exams, we need not bore them with all the writing prompts in our textbooks. The main goal of the new writing exam is to teach the leaners to write appropriate texts for a specific audience. This is best practiced in authentic, real-life situations and with a REAL audience, who will actually read the learners’ texts.
In this workshop, we will be looking at ways to create authentic situations where learners of all ages write about topics of their interest and share their writing with an audience. We’ll be looking at open formats that allow and encourage creativity and invite the leaners to take responsibility and ownership of their texts. Examples of the following projects will be presented and discussed:
- free-homework
- magazine project
- blog-writing
- storybooks (spooky stories, personification stories)
- the blank sheet (booklets)
- genius hour projects