Connecting Students with Real World Audiences

Lets talk about connecting our students with the real world audiences that we are asking them to create for. 

How often do we English teachers tell them to “imagine” they are writing this speech for  or that they are writing in an editorial for this publication…..but all they are doing is creating for us?

How often does their work reflect that they knew they were making it for us and not the real world audience we told them about?

Why should we connect our students with their intended audience?

Connecting our students to the real world audience can do so much for our students! Just a few things are:

• Increased student motivation
• Connection between what you teach and what students need to know for “the real world”
• Students create higher quality work
• Students are clear about what students are learning/practicing and why
• Feedback from those audiences can tell students how well they truly did on meeting the mark

Where can we find the ideal audience for our students?

Finding members of the community to play the role of that real world audience is so much easier than you think!

I found them by sending mass emails to the parents of my students, asking business that support our school, asking friends, and networking with other teachers.

For example:

A few years ago I paired up with another teacher that I knew who was teaching fifth grade. 

My students were working through my Mythical Heroes Around the World unit.

I wanted to have my 10th graders take what they had been learning about in these mythical stories and write heroic stories for these kids to read, give feedback, and ultimately vote on their top three favorites.

The other teacher had them write about types of heroes and what made these people heroic. Then they filmed videos sharing their favorite types of heroes and why.

My students got to see these videos! 

My students absolutely loved seeing the kids that were going to be their real world audience. Hearing what those kids admired about different types of heroes influenced how they approached writing their own stories. 

Some of my students even made her students the heroes because they loved the videos so much (Magnificent Max was one and boy was Max over the moon when he saw that book come in!).

Increased Rigor

I also got a list of vocabulary terms they were working on so my students could be sure to include them. Many of my students said that shifting their syntax and vocabulary to a lower level was much harder than they originally thought it was going to be. Her students learned how to give valuable feedback in their critiques. 

Final Thoughts

All in all it was a fantastic experience for both of our students! 

I HIGHLY recommend making this personal connection with your students’ intended audience early on and it makes the process so much more meaningful and rigorous!

Looking for a complete ready-to-go 6-week unit that introduces your students to different mythological and cultural heroes from around the world and scaffolding in this project? You can find it in my store! 

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