12:5 RAFT

When and where did I find the word:  The acronym was found in the assigned readings for this week.  It was found in the following book:

Daniels, H., Zemelman, S., & Steineke, N.  (2007).  Content-area writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann

What it means: According to Daniels, Zemelman, & Steineke (2007), Doug Buehl reports that RAFT stands for role, audience, formant, and topic.  Each is defined as follows:

Role - the idea of role describes the character's viewpoint and personality. 

Audience - this decribes who is going to be reading a a given literary work, the purpose of the work, who is 

                going to be persuaded by the work.  

Format -  This describes the format (news story, letter to the editor, etc) in which the text will be presented. 

Topic - this describes the subject that is covered by the work.  

In this context, a RAFT is a piece of writing that is based on the student's choices for each of the four characteristics of RAFT.  

Level of Familiarity: I was not familiar with the acronym RAFT, but I was familiar with the individual components of RAFT.  I was also not familiar with the use of RAFT.

Do I want to know this word well and tell why?   I can see the utility of RAFT as a closure activity for a unit.  It is a good way for students to use faction.  The students can take the facts that they've learned and weave a fictional story into them.  I can see how students might find the process of "RAFTing" engaging and how this might facilitate learning.  As such, I do want to know about this word.

Do I think others should know this word well....if so who and why?  I think building a RAFT is a useful closure tool and that content area teachers might be able to make use of this concept to help solidify learned materials.   I think that this is a great way to differential students' learning and scaffold the writing process.