As most of our parents know, Google Docs is a wonderful tech tool that allows us to view and support students during the drafting, revising and editing parts of the writing process during our sessions. What you might not know is that we use Google Docs long before the teacher assigns a writing prompt.
Whether we are reading Oedipus’ expressions of arrogance, Macbeth’s ruminations on murder or an excerpt about the spread of early Christianity, we create a document and ask our students to capture what they have learned in their own words. Specifically, we might ask them to elaborate on the following:
- what they notice or wonder about what they are reading with regard to a literary work's plot, theme, conflict or the writer’s use of language;
- what they think might happen next and why;
- what their assigned text suggests about a country or civilization’s values and whether those values have changed.
Each week, we encourage students to return to this document, adding comments, questions and reflections as we discuss them in session. Sometimes we scribe the students’ thoughts as they speak, as many prefer “talking it out” rather than composing on a keyboard.
The documents they create in these weeks are valuable because they allow the student to consider the work/historical topic from a variety of perspectives even before the writing prompt is assigned. They also allow the student to synthesize and track their thoughts over the course of the work/topic and to sort through their ideas and select the most promising ones when they begin the formal prewriting process.
