Treasure Chest of Thoughts

What methods do you use to encourage students to analyze an author’s sentence/writing style?

Here’s one way I am using our class blog to study Jack London’s style.

How might I utilize this method even more?

I simply love Google Docs, and I have barely even tapped into its potential. 

This is all thanks to Google Docs‘ and the National Writing Project’s co-sponsoring the Letters to the Next President, which required our utlizing a template and sharing/collaborating (student and teacher)…this part has inspired me!  Online lit circles.  A new way to conduct ”group work.”  Unnamed, unthought of potential.  I really like it.  Yes, I love it!

Here’s my plan:

1. Discuss the “Ladders of Questioning.”
2. “Write beside them” and model this format of question layers.
3. Assign groups, log in to Google Docs, and “share” a worksheet where the groups will develop questions online for a text that supports our current theme.  For example, in Pre-AP English 10’s theme of Who Am I?, they will study John Keat’s poem “A Song About Myself” and in English 11’s theme The Bullying Mentality,  Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess.”
4. During the next class, students will share answers online to self-selected questions.
5. Then?  Not sure…yet!

Know of another interesting feature to Google Docs?  Please share!