It can be difficult at times to ask students to write an essay. In my English classes, I remember that writing is one of the most dreaded activities of all. One day, it got me wondering, it can be difficult to get all the students to write an article each. How about getting all of them to produce an essay collaboratively?
However, one problem with that was that I was in a low-tech environment. See, I was sent to conduct a class in a school without internet. They had electricity, but lights and fans were all I had. LCD projectors were not viable as well because of the unstable voltage. If I was not careful, I could burn the bulb in the LCD projector before the class was completed.
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As such, here is a lesson plan on what I did:
Introduction
I started the class by introducing the topic for the writing exercise. I explained that it is going to be a story with the topic, 'Cynthia's dream'. An explanation of how a story can be written was given and I proceeded to provide a few guiding questions. These questions consist of the following:
i) What is Cynthia's dream?
ii) Why is Cynthia's dream important?
iii) What are the challenges faced by Cynthia?
iv) How did Cynthia overcame her obstacles?
After a brief question and answer session, I proceeded to explain how this activity would take place.
Activity
I explained to the students that essay writing will take place in a form of a chain writing activity. First, the students will be assigned a group and a large piece of paper. The students will also be divided into groups of four. All of the students will be given a station in the classroom.
The students will then write down the introduction to the story. For this, the students are given only 5 minutes to write the introduction.
After that, the students will move from their station to the next station. The students will then be given 10 minutes to read the introduction of the story, plan and continue the story. For this, I normally would walk around the class, providing any help or answering any questions needed.
This is similar to a technique called carousel brainstorm. A link to how this can be done is posted below:
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As the students were moving from station to station, chain writing the story, the excitement was clearly seen, with many giggling as they added funny elements to the story. Some even added famous characters in it, such as Micheal Jackson and a certain American president.
The activity would end once the students have visited all the stations. By this time, depending on the students in your class, you would have a rather long story. I had 40 students in my class and was amazed that despite not speaking English as their first language, each group had a story that was at least 100 words long. Not a bad achievement as they have never written so much before.
Conclusion
The teacher can then finish the class by pasting the students' work on the board. The teacher can then provide feedback on how each students did in terms of their language and content.
I love reading through their work out loud. This is the time when the story can go from Zombies, to monsters and aliens. Most important of all, the students will have fun writing despite the lack of cool apps and technology.
I'll be doing a few more posts on teaching in low-tech situations. I think there are many teachers out there who are facing problems like this, a lack of access to internet or even computers. However, that shouldn't stop the lesson from being fun. That being said, this method can also be used for training purposes, especially when the LCD projector breaks down.
Do let me know your thoughts about this lesson plan in the comments below.
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