It can be really challenging to engage your students in meaningful reading and writing activities, especially if you teach virtually. Here are some tips that might help:
- Make sure the content is relevant. Focus on student’s personalities, lifestyles and preferences to choose books and writing prompts.
- Use music as prompts. They can listen to a song and write about how it makes them feel, or change the words keeping the same rhythm. What about listen to music without lyrics and write a story inspired on it
- Use art as prompts. They can describe what’s going on in the picture, what happens next based on that scene, how the painting makes them feel, how they can relate to the painting.
- Highlight everyday situations. Ask your students to tell you about their routines. Things like what they ate for breakfast or what is on their playlist are meaningful and fun.
- Start with Storytelling. Using books as springboard for writing is a great way to go. Students can react to the story, rewrite the story changing details, re-tell the story to their peers, etc. This provides a contextualized platform with a more real purpose.
- Encourage journaling. Students can describe their daily experiences, research findings, responses to prompts, a travel journal, or their experiences as a historical character!
- Connect with Pen Pals. This is truly a fun way to read and write! You can find Pen Pals abroad, in another state/school, or maybe there can be secret Pen Pals where they write to classmates without knowing who they are.
- Get your students to sell. I love using projects where students have to do research and accomplish some sort of mission. Some of my favorites are: Sell your teacher a vacation package, a seasonal wardrobe, or a city tour.
- Provide surveys and tests. End of the quarter/unit surveys and tests (the kind you need to find out what personality type you are or what’s your lucky number) are fun and a great way to read and write with purpose.
- Create a book club. See what your possibilities are. It can be a poetry club, a riddle club, a joke club, etc. Anything that requires writing and sharing collectively.
Well, I hope this is useful for you. You probably noticed that I used the words meaningful and fun a lot here. Well, these are the key ingredients to engage your students and make them love reading and writing! Let me know if you have any questions.