Adventures with Avatars

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." (John Cotton Dana).

Has anyone tried or used avatars to motivate writing?

Have tried using Voki's to create a character who has lots of adventures, although without prompting, there wasn't a great deal of motivation. Had better success with using a Voki to recite a poem, the idea of creating a virtual character to read out their own poems motivated even the most reluctant writers to have a go. The children seem to like creating their virtual character and to just say a message rather than using it as a stimulus for writing. Although, to even write a mesage 'that can be talked back' they have to use correct spelling and practice typing.

The Drama of Writing!

Some of our best writing this year has come through drama as a stimulus for writing. In recounts we have used role play of stories, with the children taking it in turns to be each character, e.g. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, this has helped with the who, what, where and how, and with discussion and modelling the children have started to add direct speech to their writing. Drama has also helped with holiday recounts, we played charades in groups and pairs to brainstorm and recall events. We also went through an imaginary door to a place we had been, we then described the scene using our senses, and then brought an object back throught the door with us to describe. This helped with the orientation of the recount, the order of events and adding personal response. We also used drama to write a recount of the school x-country, acting out again the stages and discussing; where we were, what was happening at each and how we felt. From this some children started to use similies in their writing as well as direct speech. If anyone has any other experiences with using drama to motivate writing please comment.

Recount writing

WALT: Writing an interesting recount. using descriptive language. 

I tried using these early in the year - the children were engaged and continued trying on their own afterwards on the classroom computers. Initially I had the children watch the short animation and then write what had happened. The next day we completed the interactive and re wrote with improved adjectives. We probably did 2-3 different examples, and each time I marked for describing words. Many children were able to double and triple the amount of adjectives used, and they thrived on learning a few new words we hadn't heard of in the options menus. 

We followed on to create adjective charts for our senses in class inline with descriptive writing - I could have probably done some verb and noun work too to increase the vocabulary even more. Next I would need to think about how to continue the more sophisticated vocabulary and describing through other genre.

Each of the links below progressively helps to to write more and more complex recounts. Start at the beginning and work your way through them. The first level is the picture. It has a reading age around 8yrs. But you could use the short animations on their own with younger children to promote writing a sentence for each part.


http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L1280&pin=TSNFWD&userid=3900

http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L1281&pin=IVXQGB&userid=3900

http://digistore.tki.org.nz/ec/pinobject?objectId=L6193&pin=SLXVUT&userid=3900

Thanks to digistore.tki.org.nz for these resources

Literacy as pleasure

Using the enthusiasm of ICT to encourage learners in literacy!!

http://www.teachingtimes.com/articles/literacy-digital-communication.htm

Nothing to write about.

Hi I am also looking at ways to inspire reluctant writers. I teach a year 1/2 class ages 6-7 and have a few children who have problems with ideas and have little to write about, they seem to lack imagination even though they are very visual in learning. I have introduced various visual aids to help stimulate writing and to build a story, but am always on the lookout for other ways to initiate writing. So if you have any suggestions or comments to 'unblock' the writers block please post.

Websites to help

These websites may offer some ideas.
http://literacyandict.wikispaces.com/Writing

Kicking things off

Hi, I am teaching Yr 5-6 (age 9-11) and am looking for ways to motivate my older boys in particular to write more effectively and at a more advanced level.
Finding ways to
1. motivate them to want to write and
2. actually improve the physical writing,
 is difficult. There is no one right way, but the aim of this blog is to share ideas that have and haven't worked along the journey. Please feel free to comment and offer suggestions.