Wattpad For ELA Classrooms

Wattpad is a free application and website that allows users to write and share stories, as well as read the works of others. With a variety of different ways to format works and the option to add your own cover, Wattpad makes you feel as though you have your own published eBook. While this program is already popular amongst teenagers, I am encouraging ELA teachers to include it in their lesson plans. 

Why? Because Wattpad has more potential than a place for people to post fanfictions or their own spin on werewolf love stories. It is a hub for assessing students writing and encourage them to fall in love with the art form. 

The feeling of having your writing published online for others to read, as well as experiencing the process of organizing a book and giving it a clever cover and title is not only fun for students, but beneficial to their writing and thinking skills. They must plan ahead and decide how to separate different portions of their story into chapters. They must be able to hook readers from the first paragraph and hold their interest until the end. Wattpad is the perfect place to practice this!

For teachers to provide feedback, there is an inline comment feature that allows you to select a sentence, phrase, or whole paragraph and comment directly on it for the author to read. The author also has access to how many views, “likes” and comments their works have, much like a YouTube video. 

I feel that Wattpad provides opportunities to create very fun (albeit structured and beneficial) assignments for students. In middle school, it would have been my dream come true to create a Wattpad book for my personal narrative instead of typing it up in Microsoft Word. Wattpad is a more engaging, immersive way to teach students how to organize, edit, and improve their writing process.