How do your students share their learning with the world? Writing is an essential part of communicating what you have learned, but it’s often an intimidating task for students. To motivate students to write about their learning this year, you can introduce a dynamic tool that lets kids publish their work to share with the world!
I had a chance to take a behind-the-scenes look at Pressto this winter. This tool scaffolds the writing process for students and gives them a super creative way to share what they have learned – in any subject area. In today’s blog post, I’ll share tips to motivate students to write in every subject area. And I’ll share how Pressto can support you and your students throughout the writing process!
Write in Every Subject with Pressto
If you haven’t seen Pressto in action, you’ll certainly want to explore this dynamic tool for student writers. How does Pressto work? Once you open up the platform, you’ll have the opportunity to create a custom template for your student writers. You can decide on the structure and event and indicate which words are most important in that unit of study, so students don’t forget to include them in their writing.
Students will log in and start creating their writing pieces, ready for you to give them feedback along the way. You’ll have a comprehensive view of your whole class. This way, you can quickly determine if and when a student needs additional support.
Students using Pressto can print out their creations to make them easy to share with friends, classmates, and family members. Or students can share them digitally with a link to reach an even wider audience.
What does it look like to motivate students to write in different subject areas?
In the math classroom, students might break down the process of solving a multi-step word problem. After a science lesson, students might conduct research and share what they have learned about a weather event. In a social studies classroom, students might interview a community member to share information about their career. And in an English Language Arts classroom, your students might create a magazine, share a personal narrative, or write a persuasive piece to convince their classmates to take a stand on an issue.
3 Ways to Motivate Students
Ready to get students writing this year? Here are a few strategies to help motivate students as they write in any subject area.
Scaffold writing structure
Giving students support as they begin to write and throughout the writing process is integral to setting them up for success. One of the roadblocks that can get in the way of a student’s momentum as a writer is when they struggle with what to do next as they write. To make sure students see the pathway they’ll need to take as a writer, you can introduce graphic organizers. This page from Pressto has ready-to-use, printable graphic organizers for students.
Set up vocabulary words
How do students know which words are “must haves” in the writing piece? To keep kids motivated as they write, you can use the Important Words feature in Pressto and set student writers up for success. When you get ready to share a writing project, add a list of words that students should use as they write so they can easily track what they’ve included in their creations.
Create an authentic product
To keep students excited about a new project, make sure they view their creation as an authentic, relevant piece of writing. Show off examples of what they will create. Using Pressto for your next writing project? You might want to print out a few examples and pass them out to students. Or you could get the links to a few examples and have students scan QR codes to see what other students have made.
Ready to get started with Pressto and motivate students to write in new ways this year? Head over to their website to learn more and find their free graphic organizers on this special landing page. This dynamic tool is perfect for supporting student writers. I can’t wait to see what you and your students create this school year!
