Literacy and Learning in the Content Areas by Kane Sharon;Kane Sharon;

Author:Kane, Sharon;Kane, Sharon;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

For example, in terms of role, students could be asked to think as a political leader, a fictional character, a slave at the time the Civil War was imminent, or even a virus or a river. The narrator of The Book Thief (Zusak, 2006), set in Nazi Germany, is Death! Audiences can vary similarly, as can formats. The students’ aim in RAFT writing pieces is to use an authentic voice for a particular purpose, such as explaining or persuading. I’m in favor of giving the students as much control and choice within the guidelines of this activity as possible. That way, you’ll enjoy reading the different creative products, and the students, through sharing, will be exposed to a larger number of possible ways of reasoning.

As Alvermann and Phelps (1998) remind us, personal motivation is crucial in writing, and “a role or topic that may seem ‘creative’ to one person may hold little attraction to another. Not every student will be eager to write from the point of view of a rain forest animal, Captain Ahab’s second mate, the unknown variable in a two-step equation, or a red blood cell traveling through the circulatory system” (p. 282). Interestingly, since this quote came out, Ahab’s Wife, or The Star Gazer: A Novel (Naslund, 1999) has become a best seller—a good example of the RAFT strategy because the novelist takes on an unusual point of view—that of Ahab’s wife—to spin a story off a classic!

Show examples of published writing that model the RAFT strategy. Letters to the editor in a newspaper often identify the writers’ role or identity, address particular people or communities, or explain their reasons for expressing their opinions on a particular topic of concern. Certain novels exemplify characters who come at an issue from varying, sometime opposing, perspectives. Bull Run, a novel of the Civil War by Paul Fleischman (1993), has 16 narrators, equally divided between the South and the North, each telling his or her version of what happened during the war. Diane Siebert has a series of geography related poems, Mojave (1988), Heartland (1989), and Sierra (1991), with a desert, heartland, and mountain (respectively) narrating about themselves and their characteristics. A social studies, earth science, or English teacher can ask her students to listen as the voice from Sierra begins:

I am the mountain,

Tall and grand.

And like a sentinel I stand.

. . . I am the mountain.

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