In the beginning...
The PERSBOOK (personal book) is the idea to make writing become nice personal thing to share. The idea is based on my observation which I found students like something that looks personal. I have discovered how some students were very fond of their school bags. They decorated their bags with stickers and key chains. This has given me ideas to make traditional writing as students' personal belonging and for that they would have the feeling of ownership. This ownership creates competition. A competition to share their best feelings, their best favourites or even their best ideas.
Sharing is another key point here. The most popular social network has given me ideas on having shared writing. The basic concept of sharing statuses in the Facebook has given me this idea of shared writing.
Purpose...
The purpose of this activity is to create fun writing environment. The traditional writing; using exercise books for me is very dull and dry. I even fell asleep sometimes while marking students' writing.
Another purpose is to develop students writing skill which from generating ideas by having colourful mind maps, followed by single paragraph writing and ended by an essay.
A brief procedure...
For generating ideas, teacher asks students to get a picture from newspapers that they like most (e.g. picture of famous personalities). Then, from that picture, students provide some words that associated to that picture.
For paragraph writing, teacher asks the students to write few sentences that describe the picture. The words associated must be used. The picture can be the topic sentence and the associated words can be used in the supporting details.
To have FUN!, when the writing task (plus the decorations) is completed, ask them to get a friend to comment on their 'masterpiece!'. Teacher's comment follows their friend's comment.
The products
A short paragraph
Generating ideas
You can see more photos at my Facebook album here
