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Using Social Media to Engage Students in ELA

 When considering things in which teenagers today are interested, one of the first things that comes to my mind is social media! Over the past ten years, trends in Social Media have definitely shifted, but one thing remains the same: using social media in some form in the classroom is a great way to engage students!

Now, I want to be very clear in stating that I don't use the actual social media sites during class, because I always have some concerns about legality or some students not being permitted to use social media by their parents. However, I create assignments that use the premise of a variety of social media sites to grab my students' interest!

Here are some ideas:

Text Messaging: Give students a paper with a text message template (these can be created by the teacher or purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers) and ask them to create a text conversation that might occur between two (or more in a group text!) characters. This is a fun way for students to portray their understanding of characters' personalities. When presenting their findings, the teacher can ask students to use text evidence that leads them to understand the characters' traits and why they would say what the students had them say in their text conversations. 

Twitter: The same could be done for Twitter! If a character from a novel or story had a Twitter account, what would he or she Tweet?

    Another fun idea for Twitter is creating Tweets that utilize vocabulary words. I've asked students to make up a Twitter handle, write it on a slip of paper, and then correctly use their vocabulary word in a Tweet. To make it more fun, require hashtags!

Instagram: Often times, poets will describe, in detail, the setting of a poem or a scene in nature. An activity where students can take a moment to recognize the literal interpretations of the poem would be to give a paper "Instagram" template, have students draw a picture depicting the scene described in the poem, create an Instagram account name for the poet, and caption the image. 

TikTok: While you may not want to actually have students post to TikTok, since there can be some questionable content on that app, using the premise of TikTok (short videos with words, music, transitions, etc.) could be really fun in the classroom! Students could summarize a chapter of a book, depict a character, or portray a symbol or theme. This is one situation where I feel that students could get really creative, and the video could be submitted via Google Classroom or email rather than being posted to the app. 

Overall, differentiating assessments and finding new ways to engage students in the digital age can be a challenge, but when teachers get to know their students and recognize their interests, creatively integrating something students understand and enjoy, like social media, can have amazing results!

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