Written Conversations

This short activity plays on the love students have for writing and passing notes, text-messaging, and emailing friends. Taken from Content Area Writing, by Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke (2007), written conversation takes this sort of informal, non-curricular writing and puts it in the classroom, capitalizing on kids’ use of one-to-one correspondence as a means to spark thoughts and discussion about the class’s reading and/or assignments.
Sometimes called dialogue journals, this writing-to-learn activity can be used in any content area, and is a more engaging, active replacement for class discussion, because everyone is thinking and writing.
How to get started:
1. Students are placed in pairs. They are given a question based on work the class has done, read, studied, etc.
2. Each student writes his ideas, responses, thoughts about the question to his partner. The teacher should give a short time limit to this writing (don’t make it too long, or students will finish writing and then talk). A major rule is "NO TALKING, just WRITING."
3. The partners exchange, read the other’s response, and then write back about what the other has said.
4. This can continue for two or three passes. Too many or too much time and students run out of things to say.