Authentic Projects

One of the challenges of encouraging students to write is that often their work is only going to be read by their teacher and perhaps their parents. Occasionally it might get read by grandparents or others. Sometimes there's some kind of essay, poetry, or short story competition they can enter. But most of the time their work does not have a real, or authentic, audience.

I have been looking for ways to make the work my students do as authentic as possible.

Like many years before I've given them a writing assignment in which they have to write their autobiography. You can see the outline of that assignment here.

So what's different about this assignment? It's like many other autobiographies before it, isn't it?

This time they have a purpose. I've been blessed by two brave teachers who've joined me in trying to do something a little different. We're taking our three classrooms and having them join together to complete a series of projects collaboratively over the internet. We're going to have the students work in teams made up of students from multiple schools. Then they are going to work at a number of different tasks where they have to work with these partners at a distance using internet communication tools.

The first step is creating their partners and that's where the autobiographies come in. The students are writing their autobiographies with the intent that the classes from the other schools are going to read them. Then the students are going to submit their top choices for partners to the teachers who will then go and craft the teams. Thus the autobiographies have a purpose. The students are introducing who they are as people, as well as demonstrating their writing talents.

Take a look at the autobiographies they've written. You can find them on their blogs here.

Here's a sample of one of the student's work,

"Life is great!  I enjoy hanging and laughing with my best friends!  Ok, lets just say it this way: Life is like a jaw breaker it is good all the way through but still has a few layers bursting with flavor.  Some are sweet, and some sour, but they all have just the right amount of sugar and are full of bright rainbow of colors."

I have no idea how these projects are going to turn out, but it's certainly fun trying!