Community Matters

The Research: "Students writing for real audiences are motivated in a way that churning out papers for grades are not. Students have to experience writing for real audiences before they will know that writing can bring them power." (Rodier, 2000, p.3)

This week, students in GMS technology classes used 2D or 3D Minecraft builds to celebrate their teachers, to be distributed during teacher appreciation week. Instead of just learning the book and quill tools for some possible future unknown application, students learned these tools to achieve a meaningful purpose for a very authentic audience. It got us thinking about some research revisited recently as the LEARN regional book study of Joan Sedita's The Writing Rope concluded.

Writing (and creating) for an authentic audience and purpose has been shown to improve student performance:

• It motivates students to do their best work.
• It provides a practical reason to get feedback, revise, and edit.
• It creates a sense of pride as students see the impact of their work on a greater community.

GPS students have many "big" opportunities to showcase their work, such as the spring musical and Expo night, but we can create similarly powerful experiences with small adjustments to many of our existing assignments:

• If a current assignment is only for a teacher to read, consider:
• How might this work might be used in the real world?
• Who do mathematicians, scientists, artists or historians share this work with? What do they write or present?
• Partner up with another class: who else in the building or district might you share with?
• Consider a contest or competition: who might be an authentic reader or judge of product quality?

An authentic audience can even turn necessary tasks into more meaningful experiences. For example, you might have your students send a bi-weekly email to their parents with a recap of activities or their accomplishments in the class.

For more inspiration, check out the Edutopia article "Creating Authentic Audiences for Student Work" and the MiddleWeb article "Students write better for authentic audiences", and check out this video of 4th graders writing for authentic audiences and purposes: