5 Ways to Use Jamboard for Writing
What writing issue are your students struggling with most right now?
choppy or stringy sentences?
summary over elaboration?
overused or vague word choice?
Imagine addressing the issue effectively with just one slide.
Teaching writing is a constant reflection process. It’s something English teachers are forever honing…because what works with one group doesn’t always work for another! Regardless of the TYPE of writing issue students are working through, teachers can always use tools to increase engagement and collect quick progress data.
With the rise of paperless learning, Jamboard™ is quickly gaining popularity in the classroom. But! How can we use this tech tool to help students with writing? There truly are countless ways. In this post, we’ll explore five simple ways you can use Jamboard to support student authors across genres.
Pre-Writing
Students can use Jamboard to organize their thoughts before writing an informative, argumentative, or narrative piece. Teachers can use graphic organizers to help students organize information. Plus, templates make essential elements more transparent. Yes, a narrative may need to have a beginning, middle, and ending.
Before writing a research paper, Jamboard™ can be a brain dump location for research and more. This formative parking lot will give you insights about progress and learning. And, students can use this space to find ideas and seek feedback from one another.
These time-saving templates will work with Jamboard or Google Slides.
Peer Feedback
Peer feedback can be challenging to make meaningful. One way to scaffold students to have productive conversations is to focus on small excerpts of writing. With Jamboard™, you can have students upload a screenshot of one paragraph (or part of one).
From there, model how to add sticky note, drawing, and text box annotations so that students can do this for one another. Level up annotation feedback by assigning specific topics for each sticky note color.
Consider:
yellow = ideas (Ex. - The elaboration answers how and why instead of summarizing, and it’s convincing!)
orange = organization (Ex. - This sentence seems unrelated to the topic sentence. What is the connection?)
blue = voice (Ex. - The word choice in this paragraph is precise, and the overall tone is knowledgeable and formal.)
green = fluency (Ex. - This sentence is stringy. Try creating a compound-complex sentence instead.)
pink = conventions (Ex. - comma needed here)
MENTOR SENTENCES
Virtual templates are a great place for students to make observations about grammar. Select a mentor sentence or excerpt of your choice, and have students study it. What do they notice about punctuation, sentence structure, and figurative language?
Students can then share ideas for mimicking the mentor sentence. This is a simple way to connect grammar to both reading and writing.
Time-saving Jamboard™ templates for middle and high school writing activities
WORKSHOP CHECK-INS
One of the most challenging aspects of writing workshop is the organization. Knowing where each student is in the writing process, who needs support, and when to provide it will make writing workshop more efficient.
Teachers can use Jamboard™ as a writing workshop check-in location. Ask students to tell you whether they are prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, or publishing. This information will help you use precious class minutes more intentionally. Students can also use a template to indicate whether they want to work alone, have a check-in with the teacher, or brainstorm or revise with peers.
TARGETED SKILLS
Jamboard™ can also be a tool for targeting specific writing skills. Help students create transition lists, brainstorm options for precise vocabulary to replace overused words, and work on writing a variety of types of attention getters.
Targeted writing skill activities can be engaging when students are sharing ideas and talking about them in small groups or as a whole class. We can empower young authors by making writing visible. Think aloud as you write examples and play with language together.
Using Jamboard™ for informal writing activities can help us target areas for growth efficiently. Hopefully these ideas have given you a place to begin planning.
SPOTLIGHT RESOURCE
These writing activity templates work with Jamboard™ and Google Slides…across genres, learning settings, and purposes for writing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa is the author of Reading and Writing Haven and a collaborative blogger on Teachwriting.org.
A middle and high school English teacher for over a decade now turned instructional coach, Melissa is an avid reader and writer, and she loves sharing ideas and collaborating with fellow educators. Melissa use her degrees in English, Curriculum & Instruction, and Reading as well as her Reading Specialist certification to ponder today’s educational issues while developing resources to help teachers, students, and parents make learning more relevant, meaningful, and engaging.
Visit Melissa on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter for English teacher camaraderie and practical, engaging teaching ideas.
