When I was a student teacher one of the strategies that I used and found very helpful for my students to connect to the content learning area of social science was the RAFT Writing strategy.
The RAFT Writing strategy allows the student to take different perspectives and write in many forms to be able to demonstrate understanding within a lesson, a unit of study or as an assessment. The strategy asks student to write based off of four situational prompts:
Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A pilgrim? A soldier? The President?
Audience: To whom are you writing? A political rally? A potential employer?
Format: In what format are you writing? A letter? An advertisement? A speech?
Topic: What are you writing about?
I found that my students had to really think about what they were writing. They struggled with writing in this strategy because none of my students in the class had ever written or used this strategy before. I am confident that if I was able to continue to have my students write on a consistent basis and without the influence of my master teacher who preferred to use a different method that my students would have caught on and been able to become better writers, as well as make more connections with the material that we were learning in the social science content area. I also think that this strategy is beneficial for students because they are able to learn and practice writing in various formats that are required to write in when they are subjected to the standardized testing each year.
When I choice to use the RAFT method of writing it was based on the demographics of my student population who consisted of many English Language Learners (ELL). This strategy was great for that population since it allowed them to practice the different methods and perspectives of the English language. This strategy can also benefit many other students to make better connections and demonstrate understanding of the learning material, especially in the social sciences. I love this strategy to teach content learning material.
The research shows that the benefits from the RAFT strategy are that students must think creatively and critically in order to respond to prompts, making RAFT a unique way for students to apply critical thinking skills about new information they are learning. RAFT writing is applicable in every content area thereby providing a universal writing approach for content area teachers.
If you would like to implement this strategy into your classroom here is how you could begin:
1. Explain to your students the various perspectives writers must consider when completing any writing assignment.
2. Display a RAFT writing prompt to your class and model on an overhead or Elmo how you would write in response to the prompt.
3. Have students react to another writing prompt individually, or in small groups. It works best if all students react to the same prompt so the class can learn from varied responses.
4. As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, you can create more than one prompt for students to respond to after a reading, lesson, or unit. Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content.
Here is an example of a RAFT for the social science content area:
R: Citizen
A: Congress
F: Letter
T: Taxation
I found some links to help you get started with the RAFT strategy in your classroom.
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