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Strategy 1: RAFT
RAFT is an acronym for Role / Audience / Format / Topic. It is a way of crafting interesting writing tasks that fosters student voice and choice. The teacher may select some elements but allow students to choose others. A list of possibilities to choose from can be helpful. Here are a few examples:
Role: Fern or Charlotte Role: Principal
Audience: The judges at the county fair Audience: Teachers or students
Format: Letter or poem Format: Memo containing an intro and a list
Topic: Why Wilbur is special. Topic: Your choice!
Read more about RAFT and explore a template for writing your prompt (and providing choice) here.
Strategy 2: Storyboards
Having students complete a storyboard can give ELs the visual support they need to communicate.
It’s much like a flow map, but each box contains an illustration. Underneath, students add text. Film makers, video game developers, advertisers and others use storyboards in developing narratives. There are apps and websites that allow this to be done digitally as well as with pencil and paper. Advanced students can look at them as genera study and begin to learn theconventions of storyboarding, while Entering students can write words and phrases or participate in shared writing.
This template is from http://06schiessla.blogspot.com/2012/10/storyboarding.html
Storyboarding can also be done online. Check out https://www.storyboardthat.com/ . Unfortunately, this is not a freebie, but it does have a free trial, and teachers can use it with unlimited students. You might be able to get creative...
NOTE FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Make sure you have students write the text first. I recommend having them draft it on paper. If you set them loose without entering the text first, most will spend all the available time playing with images instead of writing (wouldn't you?).
Strategy 3: Illustrate Stories with Storybird
Storyboards are one way to support text with pictures, but creating illustrated books and poems is another. Storybird.com is a free way to allow students to author a picture book, longform story, or poem. First, writers choose a picture (s) and then they add text. Since the pictures are already complete, this takes less time than other programs I have tried--Storybird lends itself to composing at the keyboard. However, you might want to set a limit on the number of illustrations and the time dedicated to selecting them before starting to maximize writing time.
Strategy 4: Narrator
Did you know that Word will read text aloud? This is a good feature to show ELLs; often they are able to catch errors when they hear their writing read aloud. Follow this link for instructions.
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