I have often heard people complain about how texting and abbreviated language have ruined students’ writing. The overview of this lesson plan explains: “Students like to communicate by instant messaging and e-mail-and since they've embraced it, why not use this writing opportunity as a teachable moment? … Addressing the times when students do use Internet abbreviations in an inappropriate writing situation is simply a task of discussing how audience and purpose affect language use.” Bringing a discussion and analysis of this language into the classroom is a great way to engage students, while addressing an important issue that students need to consider while writing.
The lesson plan seemed to be pretty solid in connecting the curricular goals and teaching strategies to technologies used. If I were to implement this plan, I would probably try to use more technology just to make the lesson more interactive. I would use Google Docs for the peer editing step since it allows for tracking who is making revisions and when, making comments, and chatting about documents. It would be interesting to see the juxtaposition of the language used in formal emails and the language used to talk about it in using the chat or comment features. I’d also get the students more involved by making them research and come up with the list of Internet Abbreviations. The technology is essential to the curriculum goals because it contextualizes the assignment while they are completing it!
This is a great lesson plan for students. Personally, I am so used to shortening words when I text that I need to double check the spelling of my words when I send an email. I have a habit of constantly wanting to text the letter "u" instead of the word "you". In implementing this abbreviated language into a lesson plan would engage students because it is something they can relate to daily. I don't know anyone who doesn't shorten words when they text or tweet. In doing so, we sometimes actually forget how to actually spell the word. This lesson would draw attention to this issue and would, hopefully, make students more aware of their spelling.
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