This activity encourages reading and writing skills while giving students a chance to practice fluency, editing, and revising. It can be adapted to work with students from high beginning to advanced writers. Explain to students that they will be reading and writing on each others’ stories. This works best in a computer lab, but can also be done as a paper based activity.
practice fluency, editing, and revising.
Here are the steps:
- The teacher dictates the beginning of a story. Even something as simple as; It was a dark and stormy night and all of a sudden I heard a loud crash. I ran into the….
- All students will write the beginning of the story as dictated by the teacher
- Then students continue to write for one minute (this can be changed to accommodate class size and student levels). At the end of this minute the teacher says ’Switch’. All students move one seat over (or they can pass their papers one person over).
- The ‘new’ story is read and then the students continue to write on this story. I usually allow a minute for the first few switches and then increase the time a bit so students can read and write.
- Once students are back in their original seat, they have a story that will need editing and revising.
- Students can then discuss revisions and changes that they made. A discussion of reading and writing under time pressure can also be a productive outcome from this activity.
Good idea, but it’s each other’s, not each others’. Thanks.
Thanks Sara.
Good catch on the misplaced possessive apostrophe!
Randi
Hey Randi,
A few questions:
1. Does this activity work best when students know each other well or closer to the beginning of a term?
2. Do you have any other writing prompts that work well–perhaps using other rhetorical modes–or is a creative writing/narrative prompt the best approach?
Hi Shelly – Thanks for the questions!
I’ve done this activity both at the beginning of the semester and also at the end and it has worked well in both situation. Of course, if the students are really beginning language learners later in the semester is better, so that they can write a bit more. I’ve also used this activity to familiarize students with various features of Word (e.g., bold the verbs, underline place names, cut and paste a sentence).
I think there are many prompts that could work well. Maybe use a prompt related to the content area, if you are teaching in a content-based class. You could use it to get ideas flowing for an argumentative paper.
This sounds great! I teach EAP and think I may adapt it to have them write a round robin persuasive paragraph. Unfortunately, we do not have easy access to a computer lab, but I’m sure pen & paper will not be a huge hindrance.