During my placement in a grade nine English class, I was tasked with implementing a final assignment for a unit on To Kill A Mockingbird. The assignment was fairly rigid with the school’s English department, so creativity in designing it was not something I had the luxury of. However, to help students prepare for the assignment, I was able to develop a slideshow lesson to teach them the skills they would need to complete the assignment. Students were tasked with choosing one event from the novel and writing a newspaper article based on the event that would be coherent to the form of news reporting and fit with the time period that the novel was set in.
As many of the students had no experience in the differences between formal writing and a more informal type such as newspaper article writing, I designed a slideshow lesson to help students develop a sense of what was expected in a newspaper article. This included slides showcasing the differences between tone and voice in a student’s writing, differences from essay and formal paper writing as well as gathering information, such as the “5 W’s.”
This artifact was ideal for my class as it helped students to see the subtle and significant differences between pieces of writing. Upon marking the assignments I could see the skills developing in many students from their rough copies to their final submissions. However, still, there were students who were not able to adapt their writing style, particularly the type of voice needed for a more investigative paper like a news article from a proof based stating of opinion in an essay format. I would consider adding more examples to this artifact for future use to ensure that students are really seeing the differences in voice and tone so that they can draw upon them for their own work.
As many of the students had no experience in the differences between formal writing and a more informal type such as newspaper article writing, I designed a slideshow lesson to help students develop a sense of what was expected in a newspaper article. This included slides showcasing the differences between tone and voice in a student’s writing, differences from essay and formal paper writing as well as gathering information, such as the “5 W’s.”
This artifact was ideal for my class as it helped students to see the subtle and significant differences between pieces of writing. Upon marking the assignments I could see the skills developing in many students from their rough copies to their final submissions. However, still, there were students who were not able to adapt their writing style, particularly the type of voice needed for a more investigative paper like a news article from a proof based stating of opinion in an essay format. I would consider adding more examples to this artifact for future use to ensure that students are really seeing the differences in voice and tone so that they can draw upon them for their own work.