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Write, Draw, Pass: A Better Way

September 28, 2012

Write Draw Pass is fast becoming one of my favorite activities for stories, and there is no end to the possibilities.It seems like I have a new revelation of a better way to use the Write, Draw, Pass activity each time I use it!

Today, I realized when using it as a story review activity that it can be an INPUT activity instead of an OUTPUT activity. Since we know that learners acquire language through exposure to input that they understand–and NOT by practicing output (speaking or writing), I try to focus my class activities on INPUT as much as possible.

Here's how I made Write, Draw, Pass into an input activity: our class had read a story together. Instead of turning off my project and having students write down a sentence from the story from memory, I left the story projected on the board. I told students to copy down one sentence from the story into the top box on their form (click here). As they read the story and searched for the sentence they wanted to use, they were receiving input and processing the language.

Then, when it came time to play the game– I encouraged students to reference the projected story when guessing what the pictures were. The students are getting loads of comprehensible input by reading through the story each time they were passed a new paper.

When I pull some of the pictures tomorrow for this extension, the sentences will not have errors in them because they were copied from the board. Wahoo!!

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