5WH Reports

 Submitted by: Susan Dorrington (Education & Language Acquisition)

Course: English as a Second Language III (ESL098)

Themes: Reflection, Social pedagogies, First-year & basic skills, "Converted" or "repurposed"

[PDF version]

Context
This is an activity to target students' competency in critical literacy. In a typical ESL class there are many students with poor critical literacy skills, not least because we have many students with poor reading skills (in their native languages as well as in English). In ESL classes, students read a lot, usually a novel, some short stories, some biographical pieces, some newspaper articles and, if it's a paired course, some textbook material. However, most of this material is selected by teachers and therefore it inevitably reflects their personal literary and societal interests.

5WH reports allow students to build their critical literacy skills through responding to reading material that they have chosen. In theory, students should be more engaged with a critical response if they have had some agency in selecting what they are responding to.

Method
Students choose a current news story that interests them. As a homework assignment, students upload a 5WH report to their ePortfolio. 5WH stands for: Who? Where? When? What? Why? and How?

Students answer the following questions:

• Who is/are the main character(s) of this event?
• Where did it happen?
• When did it happen?
• What happened?
• Why did you choose this story?
• How did you respond?

The first four questions assess students' comprehension and summarizing skills. The Why? and How? questions begin to engage students' critical literacy skills. Beyond comprehension, students have to articulate why they chose an article and then add their own critical responses. Students develop their skills in expressing opinions as well as offering them in a fair and balanced way. They also make connections to other experiences and ideas, building on their ability to integrate what they are learning.

After the students have uploaded their reports to ePortfolio, they are put into small groups and asked to read each others' reports and respond to the Why? and How? questions. They are encouraged to question each others' opinions and add further connections and ideas.

As a way to build oral competency into this assignment, students discuss the reports and their responses to them in class. They also work as a class to develop interesting writing topics that arise from the discussions. Again, teachers tend to generate a lot of the writing topics based on their own ideas. Having students generate topics allows them to take more ownership of the language acquisition process.

Evaluation

I've used this activity in many guises before ePortfolio. In the past, students brought the reports to class as handwritten or typed documents. Then, in groups, students swapped and read each others' reports. This process had limitations, as handwriting was sometimes illegible and inevitably some students did not bring reports on the day of the activity. Students handwrote their responses on Response Sheets that were stapled to the reports. ePortfolio eliminates the handwriting problem and I've also noticed a better rate of students' submitting reports on time. Students like the comments feature on ePortfolio, maybe because of its similarity to texting. Students are able to read and respond to more reports via ePortfolio and are more likely to be inspired by students who have submitted excellent responses.

Students have the opportunity to amend and develop their reports based on their peers' suggestions and their own evaluation and, finally, they have an interesting and unique artifact that represents their critical literacy to look back on as they continue their journey through higher education.