Strategy 2 – RAFT Papers
Strategy 2 – RAFT Papers
Your Name: Rachel Denning
Name of Strategy: RAFT Papers
Source (Where did this come from?): Reading Quest
Link to the Strategy: http://www.readingquest.org/strat/raft.html
Give a thorough description of the strategy and how it will be implemented. This should be a summary of the strategy according to the original source:
RAFT papers give students a new way to approach their writing. It is a simply technique to help students focus on the four main things all writers have to consider.
- Role of the writer
o Who are you as the writer? Are you Abraham Lincoln? A warrior? A homeless person? An auto mechanic? The endangered snail darter?
- Audience
o To whom are you writing? Is your audience the American people? A friend? Your teacher? Readers of a newspaper? A local bank?
- Format
o What form will the writing take? Is it a letter? A classified ad? A speech? A poem?
- Topic
o What’s the subject or the point of this piece? Is it to persuade a goddess to spare your life? To plead for a re-test? To call for stricter regulations on logging?
They are a way to bring together students’ understanding of main ideas, organization, elaboration, and coherence. Below is a link to a blank RAFT form that can be used in a classroom.
http://www.readingquest.org/pdf/raft.pdf
Explain what part of the standard course of study is addressed by this activity.
11th Grade English
Competency Goal 6.01
- revising writing to enhance voice and style, sentence variety, subtlety of meaning, and tone in considerations of questions being addressed, purpose, audience, and genres.
Competency Goal 6.02
- reviewing and refining purposeful use of varying sentence types with correct punctuation.
- reviewing and refining correct pronoun usage, antecedents, and case.
- refining subject/verb agreement and choice of tense.
- extending effective use of phrases and clauses.
Explain why you think this strategy will work. How does the strategy help your students learn?
I like this strategy because it still has students writing, but in a simpler and more fun method. It is easy for students to get burned out on writing essays in class, but teachers cannot always afford to simply have students do free-for-all creative writing. Using RAFT papers gives the writing structure and reminds students to remember the important points they need to consider when writing. RAFT papers allow teachers to use their imaginations to come up with a topic and give students the opportunity to be creative with their writing while still learning important writing techniques.
