Writing Practice and Editing with Whiteboard Painted Wall

Walls coated with premium whiteboard paint have an obvious aesthetic appeal. What’s more, writing on vertical surfaces like whiteboard walls has been shown to help students better retain information, skills, and ideas in long-term memory. Whether or not they’re visual learners, students gain knowledge more efficiently when they write ideas and facts in bright colors and organize them with eye-catching shapes on a whiteboard painted wall.

Whiteboard walls often offer more writing space than traditional whiteboards. Thus, they make any type of lesson content come to life when you use large text and graphics. After studying multicolored words and visuals on a whiteboard painted wall, students tend to do better both in classroom activities and on exams. One area where whiteboard walls are beneficial teaching tools is writing instruction. Below are some ideas about how you can employ premium whiteboard walls in sentence-building and peer-editing activities during your writing workshops.

1. Sentence Building

Learning about correct sentence structure and composing complete, logical sentences is vital for all learners. However, whether you work with students of English as a second language or native English speakers, you may find that many learners have trouble building proper sentences. For example, you’re likely to see a lot of sentence fragments or too many simple sentences in a single paragraph. If so, there are steps you can take to help these students.

You may be unhappy with the sentences your class is writing but aren’t sure what to do to help them improve. In this case, whiteboard paint can come to the rescue. On the broad, open canvases of whiteboard walls, learners can write either impromptu sentences or sentences in response to a given prompt. Then, you and the class can help to pinpoint mistakes and make corrections in real-time, focusing on structure, grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary.

The following are three stages in teaching English sentence building that you can incorporate into your instructional toolkit.

Direct instruction

This is the stage of the process where you actively teach students about the ins and outs of sentence structure and how to write a proper sentence. Direct instruction involves a great deal of overt modeling on your whiteboard wall accompanied by explanations of exactly what you’re doing to create grammatically correct, well-formed sentences.

During direct instruction, you may write several complete sentences on your whiteboard painted wall, using a different color of dry erase marker for each part of speech you use. Then, point out or circle the various elements that comprise each sentence. You can also have your students copy down the sentences on individual boards coated with whiteboard paint using ultra-fine tip dry erase markers. The ultra-fine tips will allow them to fit a lot more words on their boards. Next, ask the learners to study the parts of speech in each sentence you wrote and how they relate to each other to form a complete idea.

Guided practice

Afterward, for guided practice, select small groups of students to work with you as they combine different ideas to make sentences. Work closely with the students and immediately address any errors they make or areas of confusion they have. That way, you’ll make sure they’re not practicing incorrect techniques.

Color-coded sentences

Sentence-building activities like color-coded sentences work well during the guided practice part of a writing lesson. This activity will help students understand and identify the different parts of speech in an English sentence. Assign small groups of students to designated segments of your whiteboard wall. Then, give the students worksheets containing a set of different sentences appropriate for their grade level.

Come up with a color code for each part of speech (e.g., verbs are red) and write the codes on the wall. Next, have the students use their low-odor dry erase markers to copy the worksheet sentences on their individual painted whiteboards. Finally, ask the students to compose some original sentences employing the color codes to indicate the different parts of speech they use. At the end of the practice, you could choose several students to share the sentences they created with the rest of the class.

Independent Practice

During independent practice, students will have the opportunity to personally apply the skills they’ve learned to write their own sentences with proper sentence structure. An activity such as color-coded sentences could also be sent home so that students can practice with their parents. If you want to make sure parents are clear about how the activity works, make a short recording that explains the directions.

2. Peer Editing

Do your students get a dazed look in their eyes when you ask them to edit their own writing? If so, offer them a new perspective through the practice of peer editing. During peer editing sessions, learners compose paragraphs or short essays in small groups on designated sections of the classroom whiteboard wall. Then they all take turns offering suggestions for improving one another’s work.

Peer editing is a powerful teaching strategy. It provides the ideal link between student self-reflection and teacher feedback. A student’s eyes might skim over many obvious mistakes to their peers. Moreover, students often respond better to their peers’ comments than to a teacher’s. For this reason, you need to have regular peer editing sessions included in your writer’s workshop periods.

Three-step peer editing routine

To start off a session, introduce your students to the following three-step strategy for peer editing in response to one another’s writing samples:

1. Provide compliments or positive feedback on the writing

2. Offer recommendations for improving style and structure

3. Make specific suggestions for corrections in grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.

You can have your students go through these steps in small-group sessions and share their results with the whole class. Then you may ask everyone to switch to individual editing practice guided by a PowerPoint tutorial and a related worksheet that you prepare beforehand. This sequence of activities primes your students to participate in constructive peer editing of their classmates’ and their own writing on a regular basis.

Stars and Wishes Exercise

In applying the above-mentioned three-step approach, you can use a routine called “Stars and Wishes.” All you must do is distribute individual boards coated with whiteboard paint and ultra-fine tip dry erase markers to the class. Then, give every student a sticky note on which you’ve written the word “stars” twice and the word “wish” once. Next ask the class to begin writing short essays or stories on their individual boards with the dry erase markers.

After they’ve finished writing, ask them to exchange boards. Then have the students read each other’s compositions. Once they’re done reading, they should stick the note on the front of the whiteboard they’ve read, write their comments on the note, and return the whiteboard to the author. The stars are those parts of the writing that the reader thought were well executed. The wish is one thing they wish the author had included or improved in their writing.

If your class needs a structure to refer to when making their wishes, you might narrow down the things they need to look for in their peers’ writing. Teachers all know that some students will go over the top with their comments, and risk hurting others’ feelings. Or they may give feedback that’s not helpful.

As a result, you may feel the need to write down some examples of constructive wishes on your whiteboard painted wall. Doing so can be especially beneficial at the start of students’ first peer editing session involving stars and wishes. Examples of wishes might include the following: “use online resources to help with your spelling”; “remember to include transition words”; and “include more details to help me understand your story.”