In his research, George Hillocks (1986) found that students learn well through “environmental learning” in which a teacher creates an “environment” that allows students to practice a skill chosen by the teacher. He found that this was, among the types of teaching and presentation he studied, the most effective way to impact student writing in the classroom.

To complete this assignment, do the following:

1. Choose a skill related to using technology to write that you would like students to practice. The skill should be related to a genre that is dependent on technology (such as an audio podcast or other multimedia genre).
2. Create an assignment that is a student-centered activity that would count as “environmental learning” as George Hillocks defines it: clear and specific objectives, materials, and/or problems that engage students directly with those objectives, and a high level of peer interaction. See Hillocks, 1986, p. 122 for a quick explanation of environmental learning (NOTE: You will be required to post this assignment that you create in the Topic 5 “Workshop Forum I” by day 3 of this week).
3. Develop procedural steps for teaching your environmental learning activity. Your steps should use typical classroom strategies such as time for a review of material, advanced organizers, time for application, time for reflection, and so on. (For example: in a review/launch/deliver/apply/close sequence, your environmental learning activity should be the “apply” portion of the lesson, while other parts of the plan help students connect your activity to their previous knowledge and provide them with the necessary background information and reflection to complete it well and use the skill and knowledge they gain as they write the genre you assign to them.)

Be aware, you will use parts of what you produce in this assignment for parts of future assignments. You will share your assignment description with your peers in the Topic 5 “Workshop Forum I”. You will use both the assignment description and procedural steps as drafts for part of your Topic 8 assignment.