Extending and Reflecting: Activities
SPAWN:
RAFT:
- The SPAWN acronym represents five categories of writing prompts. These prompts can be crafted in many ways to stimulate students' meaningful thinking about texts and topics. The writing prompted by SPAWN can be short in length and can be kept in notebooks or logs within a classroom. It can also result in extended and analytic pieces. SPAWN writing aids in learning, reflecting, and critical thinking. It can be used daily to help students focus and reflect on information learned in the classroom or it can be used to extend learning beyond the topic of the course and across topics within your content or to other disciplines.
- SPAWN stands for:
- S - Special Powers: Students are given the power to change an aspect of the text or topic. When writing, students should include what was changed, why, and the effects of the change.
- P - Problem Solving: Students are asked to write solutions to problems posed or suggested by the books being read or material being studied
- A - Alternative Viewpoints: Students write about a topic or story from a unique perspective.
- W - What if?: The teacher introduces the aspect of the topic or story that has changed, then asked students to write based on that change.
- N - Next: Students are asked to write in anticipation of what the author will discuss next. In their writing, students should explain the logic of what they think will happen next.
RAFT:
- The RAFT approach offers students a way to write about a subject matter from a perspective different from their own. With RAFTs, the possibilities are endless. As a writing assignment, RAFTs provide insight into a student's understanding of a subject by asking them to elaborate on the ideas and explore questions that pertain to the topic.
- RAFT stands for:
- R - Role (Who is the write? What perspective is the write coming from?)
- A - Audience (Who are you writing to?)
- F - Format (What form will the writing take?)
- T - Topic (What will you write about?)
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Fishbowl Discussion:
Discussion Web:
- For Fishbowl Discussion, the desks are arranged in a circular fashion. There is an inner circle, as well as an outer circle. In inner circle is small featuring only four to six discussants at one time. The inner circle discusses a topic related to the text of study. The question may be posed by the teacher, or it may be posed by a classmate who has been appointed the moderator role. As for the outer circle, they engage with the content being discussed. In open fishbowl discussions, there is an open chair in the inner circle, which serves as a point of entry for anyone in the outer circle who wishes to join the discussion. Once someone from the outer circle joins the discussion, one person from the inner circle leaves the discussion to join the outer circle. This approach makes the discussion more fluid and allows for students to share their ideas as they occur.
- Another option for the fishbowl is to make it a close fishbowl. In this scenario, the extra chair is removed from the inner circle, and the discussion is confined to the four to six participants. After a predetermined amount of time, the moderator closes the discussion and invites a new group in to the fishbowl. This continues until all students have participated or the class runs out of time. At the end of either fishbowl approach, the moderator's job is to summarize the main points of the discussion.
Discussion Web:
- Discussion webs allow students to think through the viewpoint from both sides of a controversial issue. Students work in small groups to brainstorm both reasons for and reasons against a predetermined topic, and then debate until they reach consensus. It is not necessary to create a handout for this activity. Below there is an example of what the handout could look out, the middle question can be changed to be based on the lesson.
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