Strategy: RAFT


Description: RAFT is a writing strategy that has students “entering into” the subject. RAFT is an acronym for the terms role, audience, format, and topic. RAFT involves having students write on a topic from a different viewpoint, to an audience connected with the subject, and in a form
different from a standard essay or report.


Purpose: The purpose of RAFT is to engage students’ imagination and creativity in a writing experience that moves them toward thoughtful and precise writing and toward an understanding of what has been taught. Although the writing that they do is not a traditional essay, it still requires students to process information and ideas that the teacher wanted them to learn. With RAFT, rather than simply transferring the information they have researched or learned into a descriptive essay, students work with it to develop a creative yet factual account of that information.


Application: RAFT is used to have students write about and process what they have learned in a factual yet creative manner. The RAFT paper can be assigned as a formal paper (including notes, a rough draft, peer conferencing, etc.), or as a short writing exercise to provide closure for a lesson. For example, in a unit that contains Civil War battles, students could choose and research a battle and then write an essay on it. But in the RAFT paper, they might choose to write as a soldier who fought in the battle they research and write the paper as a diary entry.

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