Supporting L2 Writers with Google Docs

This week I enjoyed reading the article Seven Ways to Use Google Docs to Support Bilingual Student Writers.

I felt like this was an appropriate read for this week after looking into Digital Storytelling, and how writing can be a challenge for ELLs. This article was based on a classroom containing students in grades 9-11, speaking 4 different languages, including English, Arabic, French and Ukrainian. The classroom is 1:1 with iPads. Every class starts by using an RSS Feed to find and read news articles. The article selections vary from student to student. The language and topics of the articles are also student specific.

Students will then partner up and share what the article was about, if it was credible and why it was credible. This is such a fantastic way to practice comprehension, speaking and critical thinking. The teacher posts the questions, along with sentence starters, in the front of the room using Google Slides. The students then copy and paste sections of their articles to a shared Google Doc. The teacher will post what she is looking for that day. The example in the article was proof as to why their article seemed credible, or why it didn't. The best part about using a Google Doc for this assignment is the real time feature.

Some other ways this teacher uses Google Docs includes

• Sharing a link to reading or video and having students add comments or annotations to the shared document
• Students create rubrics to use when reading articles
• Shared Writing...students work together to construct one paper. Google Docs has a revision history that can show the teacher which students did what. This also works as a great model for struggling students. They can watch their peer form sentences to gain a better upstanding of the task and then jump in and join when they are ready.
• Using Google Translate and looking up definitions of words and images of word.
• This one gave me a great idea for my students. I would love to give my first graders a list of words and their job would be to find images that matched the words. This would give me insight on if they understood the word/were reading the word correctly.
• Feedback! Feedback can happen in real time. It also can happen in the form of comments on the side bar rather than red pen all over a students "final copy". 

Finally I would like to end with this quote from the article. I think it sums up not only this post...but this entire blog perfectly:

"Digital-based tools not only help prepare linguistically-diverse students to compose and communicate in the 21st century, but they are also necessary to promote greater equity through increased access to rich and meaningful writing instruction."

-Christina Ponzio