Dear colleagues, friends, and family --
My 7th-grade English students have been working hard these last several weeks writing and recording personal Perspectives inspired by KQED’s Perspectives series. Now, their essays are published and out there in the world and I would LOVE for them to see the excitement and benefit of writing for a REAL audience.
I wonder if you would be willing to listen to (and/or read - they have included text of their writing) a few student-published Perspectives? Many of my students completely blew me away with the depth and sincerity of their writing, tackling difficult and personal issues in “micro-memoir” format. I think the most logical next step would be for students to have comments from “the world” on their work - compliments, encouragement, kind words, etc. Most Perspectives are under 2 minutes in length.
You can visit our class Perspectives channel by visiting our channel on Spreaker.com at http://www.spreaker.com/show/ellis_english_perspectives (scroll down and click “More Activities” to see more than just the most recent episodes). In order to make comments on their work, you do need to create a free account, but Spreaker makes it easy to link to your Facebook account and then you’re good to go. You can listen to Perspectives right from the “Recent Episodes” page, but in order to comment, you will have to click through to that particular “episode.”
There are close to 100 Perspective total in our playlist. It would be my dream come true if each of my students had at least one comment from someone outside of our immediate classroom. So much of middle school is spent feeling like you are alone and unknown and I know it would be so powerful for my students to be “heard” by the world and see other people connecting to the personal topics they have chosen to write about.
Please feel free to forward this to your colleagues and friends as well, and thanks in advance for supporting my students!
Megan Ellis
Jordan Middle School - English 7
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