Anonymous wrote:I’m a middle school English teacher. I sometimes have my students write pretend Tweets or Instagram captions where they pretend to be the character of the book we’re reading.

Please don't. Please instead teach them things that will extend their attention span rather than shorten it. Please teach them to go deep rather than surface. Please be better.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a middle school English teacher. I sometimes have my students write pretend Tweets or Instagram captions where they pretend to be the character of the book we’re reading.

Stop.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a middle school English teacher. I sometimes have my students write pretend Tweets or Instagram captions where they pretend to be the character of the book we’re reading.

So you're doing a point of view exercise with sentence-level writing. This could be a good exercise if done well. I suggest The Writing Revolution for ideas on developing sentences.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a middle school English teacher. I sometimes have my students write pretend Tweets or Instagram captions where they pretend to be the character of the book we’re reading.

Please, please teach my kid to diagram a sentence, write a proper paragraph, and complete a five paragraph essay instead. Once you've done that, teach her to write a full-length analytical or research paper. I'd much rather her have to think in long form, slowly and deeply, than short and quick. Instant reactions like tweets or Instagram (look, instant's in the name!) captions are killing society.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, we've gotten those, too. Stupid assignments.
Shockingly (or not) the kids figured it out pretty fast.

I think it's that the teachers are trying to be cool, but please just help them write paragraphs and essays.

+100000 “Cool” teachers and parents are exhausting.

+1
Yes, this is probably a separate thread, but what is the deal with 'country club' day? Why dress up like country club?

I’m a middle school English teacher. I sometimes have my students write pretend Tweets or Instagram captions where they pretend to be the character of the book we’re reading.

I tell the kids teachers and principal at the start of the year that my kids don't do homework as long as their test grades stay at an A. They will do group projects but that's it until 6th grade. If they were asked to do social media homework in 6th grade I'd email the teacher and let them know how detrimental social media is to young kids developing minds, include some studies and say I hope in the future they will pick more appropriate assignments but I've excused my kid from this one.

I would switch schools. And btw, technically not a legal assignment if the kids are under 13

Anonymous wrote:Gosh, we've gotten those, too. Stupid assignments.
Shockingly (or not) the kids figured it out pretty fast.

I think it's that the teachers are trying to be cool, but please just help them write paragraphs and essays.

+100000 “Cool” teachers and parents are exhausting.

We don’t do them

Write the teacher the question.

You find some examples to show them, print them out, and let them copy it.

Twitter is a few short sentences.

Instagram is a picture with captions or a paragraph.

It's not exactly eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to prepare a fake social media post.

They can screen capture any branding/background needed.

Gosh, we've gotten those, too. Stupid assignments.
Shockingly (or not) the kids figured it out pretty fast.

I think it's that the teachers are trying to be cool, but please just help them write paragraphs and essays.

They refuse to do it

When the school assigns homework to write some content in the style of social media posts, but your kids don't know how because they don't use social media... what do they do?