Personal View Writing Activities

Yesterday, I worked with a teacher who was having difficulty helping her fifth-grade students write about one of the books they were reading in class. The problem was the students couldn’t really see the book in terms they could understand. Students often think that reading books and writing about them is an abstract process. They don’t know how to relate a book to themselves and their own lives. To help the students write from a personal point of view, I gave the students an interactive writing activity on the computer.


The interactive activity constantly asks students if they have made the same choices that Johnny did if they had been faced with his situation? There is an on-screen guide which helps students compare what you thought you would do if you were Johnny to the decisions that Johnny made. The activity inserted forms right into their document to better structure their thinking and writing. There were drawings they could easily insert into their writing document to illustrate what they wrote. And all of this involved only a few screens, which helped the students without overwhelming them.

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