More Engagement? Shared Literacy And Student-Created Learning Opportunities Go Hand-In-Hand

How can educators foster more creation in their classrooms?

With so many demands placed upon teachers, doing even one more thing is challenging. But when classrooms are a collaborative creation space, it unlocks students’ innovative potential. It not only enhances academic performance but also fosters essential life skills.

Creating is the culmination of the learning process. There’s a reason it’s the highest level of learning in Bloom’s Taxonomy. When students create, they prove a deep understanding of the material and apply it in a meaningful way. Creating also promotes ownership of learning. Students become active participants in the learning process, rather than passive consumers of information. Much like reading together, creating is a shared experience.

So how can educators make reading and creating a shared experience? We’ve outlined several classroom activities to help make shared experiences happen.

7 Ways To Encourage More Creation And Shared Reading Experiences In The Classroom

1) Literature Circles:

A fantastic way to position students as active participants? Literature circles. In a lit circle, the teacher becomes a facilitator of the instruction instead of being the “sage on the stage.” Students own the learning while teachers observe and assess conversations among students.

Divide students into small groups and have them read and discuss a novel or play. Each group member takes on a different role:

• Questioner,
• Summarizer,
• Connector,
• Illustrator, and
• Word Finder.

These roles help students create and apply their thinking through a collaborative approach. For younger students, create role cards with defined tasks related to each role. These can even include images.

2) Book Trailers:

This high-value activity is worth the extra planning time. Students enjoy creating and showcasing book trailers. Students will impress even the most tech-savvy teachers with their creative use of technological tools.

Invite students to make a book trailer or teaser for a novel or play using multimedia tools like iMovie or PowerPoint. This encourages creativity and helps students visualize and summarize the story. Students enjoy this activity. They’re showing their comprehension of conflict, character development, symbolism, and theme. Book trailers expand a student’s analytical capacity. To make this a shared learning experience, allow students to work in small groups.

Provide class time for groups to share their trailers with classmates to collect constructive feedback. Before submitting final assignments for a grade, teams can make edits to the project. Foster community by posting the results online in your learning management system, website, or class blog. Then allow class time for students to enjoy and watch the trailers!

3) Literary Journals:

Digital journals are a great way to perform quick assessments of student understanding. Use this free emoji lesson plan for one journal prompt. After reading an in-common text, students can comment on each other’s emoji responses with marginalia. Students can post and view their classmate’s emojis, illustrations, and news articles. These responses and real-world connections provide an opportunity for students to

• express their creativity,
• develop their writing skills, and
• synthesize their reflections.

4) Role-playing:

Role-playing helps students understand how dialogue, positioning, and non-verbal cues drive conflict and plot. Teachers can assign passages to small groups of students where they act out scenes from a novel or play. This helps students engage with the text and explore different perspectives at a deeper level. This collaborative creation encourages students to analyze character development more deeply. They must become the character and are no longer an observer from afar.

5) Graphic Novel:

Student-created graphic novels encourage creativity, visualization, and application of their visual storytelling skills. Graphic novels also foster students’ understanding of symbolism and theme.

To get started: put students in small groups to create a graphic novel adaptation of an in-common novel or play. Students can use Glose’s digital tools to enhance their graphic novels with audio and visual effects.

Modify this activity by inviting students to recreate one significant event or scene from a shared reading. You can also read a graphic novel as a class as a baseline model to provide a bit more scaffolding. When students create graphic representations of their reading, it helps them understand an author’s choices. Students understand how each part of a plot ties together to make a story.

6) Literary Podcast:

Student-produced podcasts are an effective way to build literacy comprehension. And, when students create and lead their own podcasts, they use critical thinking skills and build “the capacity to articulate concepts based on received, analyzed, and systematized information,” (Sims). Speaking and listening skills are important for every student to practice.

To begin, start small. Students can create a literary podcast where they…

• discuss their favorite books and authors,
• share their own writing, and
• interview authors or experts in the field.

Students transform their communication and research skills in a tangible way with podcasts.

7) Blackout Poetry:

Another way to implement a shared experience with in-common literature: blackout poetry.

Sometimes students find poetry inaccessible and challenging to create. But blackout poetry is a great way to scaffold student learning while encouraging their creativity. Seeing the different interpretations of shared texts broadens student perspectives. Plus, students will enjoy hearing how their classmates took the same passage and made it their own.

Pre-select several critical passages or allow students to pick out a passage on their own. Then, show students how to create a blackout poem through modeling. Slash out unimportant words as a whole class, and then reread the poem you’ve created together.

Students can work collaboratively or independently. To further engage students in making their poems a shared experience: host a poetry reading, literary cafe, or open mic night at your school. Don’t forget to put their poems in their Glose digital portfolios, too!

Creating In The Classroom Makes Learning A Shared Experience

Creating aligns with the skills required in the 21st-century workforce. Future jobs need more innovation and creativity. By emphasizing creating in the classroom, educators are preparing students to be…

• critical thinkers,
• problem solvers, and
• innovators.

Students become collaborative and adaptive to the rapidly changing demands of the modern world.

Want to create more shared and creative experiences in your school? Contact Glose for Education now.

Glose for Education is an online platform that makes reading a social experience. Readers learn from one another by creating shared spaces to interact with digital texts. Click here to learn more about how Glose for Education can support your instruction. And, download this free lesson plan for a fresh way to have students interact with a text.

Works Cited

Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved from: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.

Sims, Julius. “Benefits of Podcasts for the Learning Process.” Retrieved from: https://Www.bcast.fm/Blog/Benefits-of-Podcasts-For-Learning.