Collaboration & Interaction
In addition to embracing technology and alternative texts in the English classroom, another way, I've discovered, to truly engage student in a variety of academic tasks is to provide an abundance of opportunities for students to collaborate with their peers. As I've said before, our students are more "plugged in" than ever before. By "plugged in," however, I not only mean in the context of technology. I also mean in relation to people. With the advent of technology (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.), our students have grown up in a collaborative atmosphere, where there seems to always be an audience. This is the culture that they have grown up in and become accustomed to, so it only makes sense that they would learn in this type of environment.
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