On placement I realized the effects of social media on students today. I decided to look at this from a positive perspective while teaching The Great Gatsby to my grade 12 University Preparation class. I created a worksheet wherein the students had to make Tweets as if they were one of the characters in the novel. They had to get inside the mind of that particular character and write a Tweet about how that character felt in a particular scene in the novel. This way of going about getting students to understand characterization and point of view in particular instances in a novel or piece of writing.
My students had so much fun with this activity and really got into the mind of characters. I was pleased with their ability to think like a character they thought they had so little in common with. This worksheet proved to be effective and I plan to continue to use it in the future. To make the activity more personal, I found a twitter generator online and took student exemplars and input them into the generator to share with the class the following day.
I found connecting to my students on a level that was familiar to them, such as Twitter or social media, made the text and made the academia accessible. Students learn best when they are comfortable with the activity and the material and in creating a worksheet centred on social media, they felt in their own element and produced amazing work.
This worksheet also worked well as a “ticket out the door” activity that kept the students engaged at the end of class, and served as a reflective activity for the lesson taught that day. It was a formative assessment that can be utilized in any English unit.
Below is a link to the worksheet template as well as examples of student work in the twitter simulator.