Designing Authentic ELA Tasks

High school English language arts educators, you probably enjoy reading, writing, and analyzing literature. Not all students relish their English lessons. It is possible to promote greater engagement, inspire self-directed learning, and increase intrinsic motivation to learn by designing authentic learning tasks. This mini-course will explore how to make high school-level English prompts more authentic and connect them with real-world applications. You will practice designing your own authentic problems by drawing connections to students’ lives and communities, providing opportunities to explore careers, asking more open-ended questions, and more! As you integrate authentic tasks, your students will be ready to engage in real-world English problems, analyze varying perspectives, and conduct independent research.