A breakdown for teachers who teach W.6 in middle school ELA. In this post, we’ve included learning targets, concept breakdowns, resource suggestions, and activity and assessment ideas!
To be completely honest, we love this standard over here at The Sparkly Notebook because it is so forward-thinking and asks students to do exactly what we do every day.
A decade ago, the way we approached this standard was so different from how we do now.
These days, we can actually have students creating content for blogs and social media and even a digital newspaper or as a series of posts on X (formally known as Twitter).
It is truly fascinating to think of all the ways you can approach this standard now.
As we talk about how to teach W.6 in middle school, we’re coming from the perspective of a group of language arts teachers who also work in the online space and understand how many opportunities are available for students with this particular standard.
Let’s get into the learning targets for W.6!
Learning Targets
By focusing on learning targets, we can model our lessons to hit very specific goals and skills. In this post, we talk about how we break down each standard and make a plan for learning, practicing, and reviewing the standards throughout the year using the checklists below.
Here are the learning targets on which we developed our resources for W.6.
Teaching W.7.6 (7th Grade)
7th Grade Standard: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources, as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.
7th Grade Learning Targets
- I can use technology to publish writing.
- I can use technology to link and cite sources.
- I can use technology to collaborate with others.
Teaching W.8.6 (8th Grade)
8th Grade Standard: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently, as well as to interact and collaborate with others.
8th Grade Learning Targets
- I can use technology to create and publish writing.
- I can use technology to present the relationship between information and ideas efficiently.
- I can use technology to interact and collaborate with others.
Short Form vs. Long Form Writing
Online content is made up of both short-form and long-form writing, and as we ask students to write using technology to produce and publish the writing, we’ll want them to be well-rounded in both.
Some examples of long-form writing in the online space include:
- Emails
- Blog Posts
- Essays
- Writing Scripts for Podcasts or YouTube
Some examples of short-form writing in the online space include:
- Posts on X
- Posts on Instagram
- Posts for Facebook
- Short scripts for TikTok
- Posts for LinkedIn
- Short sales emails
All of these types of writing can be produced and published online, and for many of them, there are tools you can use to support and improve your writing.
At this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the use of AI when writing for the internet. It is not uncommon for businesses to use AI to help speed up the creation of their long and short form content, but what many find is that the content often lacks the personal touch that comes from writing about one’s own experiences and in your own voice.
Teach students some ways that they may use AI that still gives them full ownership over their work but also allows them to use AI in a way that will support their understanding of how it is used.
Some examples of this would include…
- Using AI for brainstorming on a topic
- Using AI to break up a long-form piece of content into short-form content or posts that fit the requirements for a certain platform.
- To develop a template for common types of writing, like emails
These are only a few ideas, but they are ways that AI is being used right now in the online space to speed up the delivery of content…especially with so many places online creators are expected to be present.
Resources for teaching W.6
When picking resources to help teach W.6, you’ll want to make sure the resource teaches, practices, and reviews the standard at the appropriate level for the students you’re teaching.
Each of these resources works through the standard using grade-level-specific passages and activities that help the student develop the standard completely.
Activities and Projects for Practicing and Assessing W.6 in Middle School
Here are a few activity ideas included in our resources. We hope these ideas inspire you as you consider how to teach W.6 in middle school ELA.
- Creating an Infographic: We love using infographic creation in the classroom because it is visual and research-based and requires some short-form content writing. This activity and the handouts needed to work through it with students are available in our 7th-grade resource!
- Citing Sources: The way you cite sources online is different than the way you do it in a formal essay. Discuss these differences with students. We help out with teaching hyperlinking and creating citations in both of our resources for this standard.
- Write a Blog Post: Take students through the process of starting a blog and creating the core pieces of content for that blog. In our 8th grade resource, we have a checklist students can review as they write their posts.
- Collaborating Online (Etiquette): Teaching online etiquette is important. As we all know, there are many people who have never been trained in online etiquette, and it causes a lot of negativity to many people. Take the time to talk to students about what makes the online space hard to navigate and how they can set themselves up to be successful in that space. In our 8th-grade resource, we have a handout you can use to lead this discussion.
It is hard to write about how to teach W.6 in middle school because the online space is constantly changing; therefore, the opportunities and complications associated with this standard are changing.
This can seem overwhelming for some teachers, and there are some people who will choose to pretend that some of these technological advancements don’t even exist, but the thing is that they do, and so it is our job to make sure that we are doing what we can to help our students prepare for them.