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One way to walk through a writing assignment with your students is to use the Reading Apprenticeship strategy called Talk to the Text. This approach allows students to think about an assignment independently, as a small group, and then as a class. This approach also gives power to students who are reluctant to speak “on the fly” because students can prepare questions on assignment sheet. Here are some simple steps to follow:
Model “Talk to the Text” with another assignment sheet. Show the students what they are about to do with your assignment. Give them the “Think Aloud” handout for guidance.
Distribute the actual assignment, but encourage students to read it silently for a few minutes and begin to write questions on the text that wonder, clarify, explore the assignment.
Ask students to share their questions, concerns, wonderings with the people at their table. Can students help answer each other’s questions? Do some students have the same questions? This sparks a small-scale conversation about the assignment.
Finally, ask students to share out to the whole class when there is a question left unanswered or a word left unknown.
This strategy helps you see the parts of the assignment that are/are not clear to students, and it gives power to the students to prepare written questions to read Walking through a Writing Assignment with Students
oud, which can be a great way to encourage participation from students who need time to collect their thoughts.
Please note, this can be done in an online classroom as well. Here is an example of how students could highlight words and add questions and comments to an assignment in Google doc format.
