A shared Google Doc, which can be simultaneously edited by everyone in a class and updates quickly to everyone’s screen, is a huge boon to teachers. Here is an activity which capitalises on this function to enable a group to develop a shared understanding of a text. It is useful for texts which are perhaps a bit formal and dry but very important, such as syllabus extracts or, in this example, the Preamble to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Students find it really fun to express a communal creative response to the text by turning it into an anarchically decorated text.
In this example, the students are just getting started, using colours, font choices, font sizes, bold, italic, underline and other text effects to interpret the important words. In longer texts you can also encourage students to deprioritise less important parts by greying them or making them smaller.
Sorry about the irreverent name of this activity: it is a reference to a silly TV show from the mid-00s, in which people would do up worn out old cars in tastelessly flamboyant excess. You can omit the name if you wish, but it is good to show pictures of these cars to give the students inspiration.
Have fun!
Image: Saba Sayad on Unsplash
Thanks Max, it looks like a fun approach to evaluating answers from past papers and IR drafts. I am curious – what instructions do you give them? I am pretty sure mine would be either too confused or would take into the very silly mission of rainbowising the text…
Lluis
Hi Lluis. Yes, maybe it takes a certain level of maturity which the kids in my teaching context weren’t lacking. I typically explain by doing. I explain why I’m highlighting or deprioritising a few words and phrases. I guess it helps if the first time is done as a whole class so you’re directly supervising. With a nudge here and there I found the students got it well. As for superficial decoration, I guess any edit a student makes is an opportunity to ask them what they mean by it. We can make it clear the decoration has to mean something. If you try the activity, do let us know how it goes with your students!
Hi Max,
Thank you for your answer. I tried it with mixed success. I was a bit too ambitious and gave them a Q4 answer for them to read. Since they struggle with reading long texts, I thought the idea of reading-through-pimping could have worked – and I gave them some guidelines in that all their edits had to do with structure, connectors and main points.
Some got something out of it, but others focused most of their time on aesthetics in the first paragraph and did not move from there! They later could only explain the meaning of their ‘pimping’ in terms of how long the word was, or how powerful it sounds – but not a look at content or structure. This was certainly poor delivery from my part, and perhaps I insisted too much on their freedom and not so much on my expectations. I will also try it with a shorter text (perhaps just one paragraph) where the power of specific words is more relevant…
Anyway, thanks for the inspiration! And your great website – I am getting so much energy and motivation from your ideas!