An Alternative to White Water RAFTing

     Confession time: I'm sometimes a little bit of a wimp. So, even though part of me thinks white water rafting would be a wonderful experience (beautiful surroundings, bonding with family and friends, teamwork, the wind in my hair), a larger part of me thinks white water rafting would be a terrifying experience (the raft tipping over, powerful currents sweeping me away, rogue waterfalls). And so, alas, I must tell you: I will probably never go white water rafting.

     BUT -- here's the great news. I love plain old RAFTing! And you can join me on the adventure . . .

     A RAFT is a type of writing response that can be used in any content area at virtually any grade level. It's a great way to infuse some creativity and fun into how we check for our students' understanding. Here's how the acronym breaks down:

Role (what is the role of the writer?)

Audience (to whom is the writer writing?)

Format (what is the format for the writing?)

Topic (what is the focus of the writing?)

     And here's how it works. Let's say a third grade teacher wanted to know if students understood a recent lesson on the life cycle of insects. She could assign students to write in the Role of the butterfly to the Audience of a scientist in the Format of a letter regarding the Topic of its experience with complete metamorphosis. In order to write from the perspective of the butterfly itself explaining its metamorphosis to a scientist, the student needs to be able to understand a lot about this topic. And so the RAFT can help us check for understanding of content learning.

     The above example of a RAFT prompt comes from Fisher and Frey's (2007) Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom, a great book I wrote about in my last blog entry as well. Here are a few more examples of RAFT prompts from this text:

For 6th grade social studies...

R: Marco Polo

A: Potential recruits

F: Recruitment poster or brochure

T: Come see the Silk Road!

For high school geometry...

 R: Scalene triangle

A: Your angles

F: Text message

T: Our unequal relationship

     Happy RAFTing!