RAFT

As I sit here procrastinating the “real” work that needs to be done tonight (LESSON PLANS!), I’ve decided to share another differentiation strategy from Anne Beninghof’s Engaging ALL Students workshop I recently attended.  I actually remember learning about this strategy long ago, but it was something I wasn’t sure how to use at the time.  Since I never used it in my classroom, I forgot it existed.  I seem to forget things a lot more lately.  Stress?  Age?  Multi-tasking failure?  Who knows…? Thank God for technology, though, because now I have a place to store all these ideas! J

RAFT is a writing activity that promotes higher order thinking and gives students a fresh way to think about how to approach writing.  I think this would be a great summarizing activity at the end of a lesson or unit, as the students need to have the concepts mastered to be able to do this independently.  This strategy brings together students’ understanding of main ideas, organization, elaboration, and coherence. 

Here’s how it’s broken down:

Role - Who are you as the writer?

Audience - To whom are you writing?

Format - What are you writing?

Topic - What is the subject or point of the writing?

The topic should be considered first and should come from the objective(s) of your lesson.  For example, if students are learning about descriptive writing, the topic might be to “describe the importance of adjectives in descriptive writing.”  The writer could pretend to be a noun (role) writing a persuasive speech (format) for adjectives (audience), trying to get them to join the cause to improve their descriptive writing. 

Good evening, wonderful adjectives!  Tonight I want to ask for your help.  As you know, we common nouns have been included in many brilliant students’ descriptive writing as they tell about interesting places they’ve been and exciting activities they enjoy.  But we have noticed that there are only a few supportive adjectives joining the writing party.  I am here this glorious evening to ask for your much-needed help in making the beautiful stories these kids write more interesting.  We need help making a good impression when people read about us!  I don’t want to be considered “just a tree.”  So all you willing adjectives out there, Majestic, Willow, Green, and all the others, please come and support our important cause in helping the children become better writers!

Along those same lines, you could have students describe the importance of capitalization and punctuation in writing (topic).  The RAFT paper could be a text message (format) from a teenager (role) to a friend (audience), describing the effects of missing capitalization and punctuation.  (Can you tell we’ve been focusing on writing a lot lately in my class??? J )

So the charts would look something like this:

R Role	A Audience	F Format	T Topic
noun	adjectives	persuasive speech	Explain the importance of adjectives in descriptive writing.
teen	friend	text message	Describe the effects of missing capitalization and punctuation in writing.

Here are a few more examples from the participants at the workshop.  (I realize that some of these posters have misspellings and other errors.  It drives me crazy too!  Just think of these as rough drafts.)

I would suggest that in the beginning, you choose one RAFT assignment for your topic and model it for the whole group.  After several models and guided practice sessions, and as the students become more comfortable with the process, you can create a chart with several options and allow students to choose the one they are interested in.  The topic can be the same, but from different points of view.

If you have any input on this strategy, please share!  What grade level do you teach?  What topics did you use?  How successful was/is it in your classroom?

Anne Beninghof

Recently, I received an invitation to attend a workshop called Engaging ALL Students through Differentiated Instruction by Anne Beninghof.  The name was not familiar to me, so I was reluctant to go.  I have attended many workshops in the past that promised to provide effective strategies for differentiation in the classroom, but they just didn't deliver.  I always left with few strategies that I could use easily without a lot of time and/or money spent.  (And I don't know about you, but I don't have much of either to waste!)  And I couldn't describe those few strategies today because I didn't have an effective system to store them for future use!  So today, I recommend two things: attend this workshop and get yourself organized!

Attend this workshop.  I finally agreed to go, and I was not disappointed.  By far, this workshop is one of my favorites!  I was thrilled that there were so many creative (and easy) strategies displayed throughout the room, and I became inspired before the presentation even started.  By lunchtime, I had already learned many wonderful ideas that I am excited to put to use in the classroom.  Best of all, I didn't even fall into that dreadful "2 o'clock slump";  I was too busy taking notes!

This picture is one of my favorites from the displays:

Glove Balloons:  Use this idea for any lesson with 5 points or factors.  Write one on each finger of a rubber glove.  Blow up the glove and toss it to a student.  The finger they catch will determine their response.  I was particularly excited about this idea for teaching writing (5 W's for narrative prompts, 5 steps of the writing process, 5 senses...)  You can also use this for vocabulary, geography, science, etc.

Another strategy:  Mark in the textbook without damaging the book?  Yep!  Use transparency sheets or report covers with Vis-a-Vis markers, Wikki Stix, or highlighter tape.  All of these are erasable, removable, and/or reusable! Students can "write" in their books to show facts from the text or to prove their answers to questions.  I'm definitely planning to try some of the other strategies I came away with, but I've got to get them organized first.

Get yourself organized.  I strongly suggest that you develop a system for organizing ideas from fellow teachers, workshops, the internet... I have a couple of different methods at this point, but since I am mostly a visual learner, I am finding that pictures are much better than simply taking notes. If I write something down, I may not completely understand it 3 months (or 3 days) later. I have learned that a camera is my best friend when it comes to remembering things... I have been using it a lot for everyday things (shopping, classroom reminders, etc.).  Since I didn't want to forget any of the ideas displayed during the workshop, I was thankful to have my cell phone so that I could capture these images and remember them.  Now all I need to do is upload them to a designated folder on my computer for easy access later.

I love organization, so I am constantly looking for new and different ways of organizing.  If you have any ideas or suggestions for me, please let me know.