raft format ideas

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William S. Jewett (1821–1873) The Promised Land – The Grayson Family , 1850 Oil on canvas 50 3/4 x 64 in. (128.9 x 162.6 cm) Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.79

Graphic Organizer: RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) Writing Strategies

Using raft writing strategies with artworks.

The RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) writing strategy, developed by Santa, Havens, and Valdes [1] , helps students understand their role as a writer and communicate their ideas clearly by developing a sense of audience and purpose in their writing. Works of art are rich sources of ideas and details for narrative and other kinds of writing. This RAFT strategy lends itself to use with works of art and to helping students develop their ideas and organize their approach before they begin to write.

In the example below, we added “questions to answer” to the RAFT matrix as a way to help students think through the components of this activity.

Download this material as a pdf for classroom use here .

RAFT activity: The Promised Land—The Grayson Family

Directions for teachers:

• Introduce students to the painting The Promised Land—The Grayson Family (or another work of art for which information is available). Have students read about it and discuss the story it tells.
• Show examples of ideas for the RAFT based on The Promised Land .
• Next, project the table below on the board. Ask students to pick a role from the chart, and identify an audience, format, topic, and questions for their written piece to answer.
• Give students a copy of the Role Development Chart worksheet  and have them complete it before they begin writing.

Ideas to get students started on their RAFT:

Audience: family member, friend back home, friend already living in the West, foreigner considering moving to America, oneself (diary), museum

Format: letter, newspaper story, song, poem, diary entry, advertisement poster, caption

Topic: traveling to California, the difference between home and the West, the land/resources of the West, hunting, setting up camp

Questions: How do I feel about my journey? What do we do next? Where will we live? What challenges do I face?

Role Development Chart

Before writing your piece take time to put yourself into the role you have selected. Think deeply about who you are in this role and what you want to include from your reading to make your writing credible. What perspective will you have on the issue you think is most important?

[1] Santa, C., Havens, L., & Valdes, B. (2004). Project CRISS: Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.

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RAFT Writing Template

About this printout

Students can utilize this printout to organize their writing as they learn to use the RAFT strategy .  This printout enables students to clearly define their role, audience, format, and topic for writing.

Teaching with this printout

More ideas to try, related resources.

By using this printout to organize their writing, students learn to respond to writing prompts that require them to write creatively, to consider a topic from a different perspective, and to gain practice writing for different audiences.

The four categories of focus for a RAFT include:

• R ole of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A movie star? The President? A plant?
• A udience: To whom are you writing? A senator?  Yourself? A company?
• F ormat: In what format are you writing? A diary entry? A newspaper?  A love letter?
• T opic: What are you writing about?

Before having students write their own RAFT, use this printout to model how students should use this technique.  Discuss with your students the basic premise of the content for which you’d like to write, but allow students to help you pick the role, audience, format, and topic to write about.  Allow student input and creativity as you craft your piece of writing.  Have an in-depth discussion specifically about why you chose the different categories that you decided on ( R ole, A udience, F ormat, T opic).  Model a think-aloud about why having a certain role and audience might make your stance or ideas about a certain topic different and may alter your writing style and, therefore, your format. See the Strategy Guide titled Using the RAFT Writing Strategy for more information and ideas pertaining to this technique.

• Give students a writing prompt (for which you have already chosen the role, audience, format, and topic) and have students react to the prompt either individually or in small groups, using this printout. It works best if at first, all students react to the same prompt so the students can learn from the varied responses of their classmates.  Hold a class discussion about how students created their personal version of the assignment.
• As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, you can create more than one prompt for students to respond to after a reading, lesson, or unit.  Or, you may choose to give students a list of choices for each area and let them pick and choose their role, audience, format, and topic.
• Eventually, students may choose a role, audience, format, and topic entirely on their own.  Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content.
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Reading and Writing Strategies

RAFT Writing

The RAFT strategy encourages students to write creatively, consider a topic from a different perspective, and to gain practice writing for different audiences.

Download a Graphic Organizer

RAFT is a writing strategy that helps students understand their role as a writer, the audience they will address, the varied formats for writing, and the topic they’ll be writing about. 

• R ole of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A pilgrim? A soldier? The President?
• A udience: To whom are you writing? A political rally? A potential employer?
• F ormat: In what format are you writing? A letter? An advertisement? A speech?
• T opic: What are you writing about?

Why use the RAFT strategy?

Students must think creatively and critically in order to respond to prompts, making RAFT a unique way for students to apply critical thinking skills about new information they are learning. RAFT writing can be used across disciplines as a universal writing approach.

How to create and use the strategy

• Walk students through the acronym RAFT and why it’s important to consider various perspectives when completing any writing assignment.
• Display a RAFT writing prompt to your class and model how you would write in response to the prompt.
• Have students react to another writing prompt individually, or in small groups. It works best if all students react to the same prompt so the class can learn from each other’s responses.
• As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, you can create more than one prompt for students to respond to after reading, a lesson, or a unit of study. Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content.

Sample RAFT prompts

R:  Citizen A:  Congress F:  Letter T:  Taxation

R:  Scout Finch  A:  Community of Monroeville, Alabama F:  Eulogy for Atticus Finch T:  Social Inequality

Strategy in action

For more RAFT prompts, review Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey’s compiled list of Picture Book RAFT prompts . You may also find a RAFT scoring rubric and additional RAFT examples helpful as you implement the RAFT strategy in your class. Now, let’s watch as a teacher uses the RAFT writing strategy in her science class.

Tips for success

• It’s important for students to learn how their writing may change for different perspectives. It’s helpful to show students examples of writings on the same topic and format but with different roles of the writer or audience.
• Once students are fluent using the RAFT strategy, they can take any topic and choose the role, audience, and format on their own.

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RAFT Writing

I first heard of RAFT writing several years ago as a strategy for students to show their content knowledge beyond just writing reports.  Most of the suggestions for use have been in upper grades classrooms, especially in middle school and high school.  It’s also a common format for writing in content areas to have students demonstrate their understanding of the topic that has been learned- often as a product at the end of the unit. RAFT Writing has students respond when the Role, Audience, Format, and Topic are laid out for students to do their writing, often showcasing their content knowledge.  It’s also a great tool to help teachers write prompts for those content areas.

Over the years, however, I’ve used RAFT as a writing strategy for analyzing prompts in elementary school with students as young as first grade.  RAFT has allowed me to give students experience and exposure with various writing types, build in creative writing into our writing centers, and give students a tool to use for state testing to analyze the prompts their given and respond appropriately.

RAFT is an acronym identifying the four aspects of a writing prompt:

R- Role (who is the character/narrator and their point of view)

A- audience (who is the writing for), f- format (what type of writing is expected), t- topic (what you are writing about).

Examples of RAFT in content areas could be: ~Write an article as if you were a water droplet going through the water cycle.

~Write a story as a water droplet going through the water cycle.

~Pretend you are a child in 1774 in what will eventually be America. Describe what your life is like.

RAFT Writing is commonly used as essay responses at the end of units to measure students’ content knowledge.  It’s also used in more open ended ways allowing for differentiation; the role and audience may be the only pieces given and students are able to choose the format and specific topic.  Or, students are given the topic and format, but can choose their role and the audience.  This is most often done in intermediate classrooms and higher as the focus is on the subject and content that has been taught, and not on the writing itself.

I’ve used RAFT as a strategy in other ways in my elementary classroom, and with other classes and groups of students, with good success.

RAFT Writing in the Primary Grades

I have used RAFT Writing with students as young as first grade as a way of building creative writing. In first grade I introduce it by explaining each of the components.  We then generate, together, several different items for each component. We generally do about 4-6 and often use students in the class or people in the school as the role and audience. This helps make the task relevant to students. We then roll a dice to choose which item from each category we’ll use.  We do a shared writing of it together, the first time. Then, we select another for the students to complete independently.  After students are familiar with RAFT and how it can be used to generate a writing task, I use my RAFT Writing cards as an option during our centers to build students’ creative writing.

RAFT Writing as a Test Prep Strategy

I also really like using RAFT as a test prep strategy.  On the state tests, students are given an on-the-spot prompt to respond to.  Often, it’s in response to reading, and students are expected to respond from a range of genres.  In my experience, students struggle to identify the proper genre to respond to or miss out on other key pieces of information, such as writing from a character’s perspective.  With my third graders, it’s so important to me that they have a strategy to “attack” a difficult task that is given to them.  RAFT is a strategy that can make them break down the prompt and help them feel ready to respond successfully.

We do our main writing work during our writers workshop four days a week. However, one day a week, we do specific RAFT practice. I begin the year doing various narrative writing tasks with RAFT, though I introduce it with examples of all 3 genres. I want my students to be successful with it so I don’t typically do much of the other genres until we have explicitly done them together. However, I will occasionally do something like a how-to, or something opinion based that I know they have strong feelings about. Our weekly RAFT practice gives my students an opportunity to work through the genres in a more spiral way than we typically do during writers workshop. It also allows me to continue to do focused lessons on specific strategies I want to see in their writing.  This pre-writing step has made a world of difference for my students as they tackle the demands of state testing writing prompts!

After I’ve introduced and practiced RAFT with my students, we begin analyzing prompts. Using the strategy to think through and plan writing with the acronym is why it’s so effective and useful. This easy form is one I use when I begin having students independently analyze their writing prompts.  I have students identify each area of RAFT and then I work to correct any misconceptions.  You can download the free page by clicking the image below.

I also offer a variety of free RAFT writing resources in my free library. As we practice RAFT throughout the year, we move on to students writing based on the the prompt information. These printables and templates have us up and working with a prompt in just a few quick seconds. I have 5 ready to print digital RAFT prompts ready to go!

You can download each of them from my Free Library. To access it, sign up for my newsletter. After confirmation, you’ll receive an email with the link and password to access each of the files for yourself.

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RAFT is such a useful writing strategy that can be incorporated in so many different ways in the classroom.  In addition to our writing block, I also use digital prompt writing and journals to give students much needed practice responding to prompts on a regular basis.  You can read more about that by clicking the link below.

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I'd done it often in 4th grade, but not with much success in 2 nd. They have so much trouble, it seems, with " role" ( writing from that perspective) . I do love the format and the creativity it allows.

I started with silly ones like kindergartener. They were so excited to write with incorrect spelling and backwards letters. I let them do it once, but then they got it! Maybe it's also a developmental shift for them right about that age.

Cute idea! (You know that this is Debi, don't you, not Kelley? I can't figure out how to get her name off the account.)

Yes, I just figured you were on the wrong account 🙂

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RAFT: Role, Audience, Format, Topic

The RAFT strategy employs writing-to-learn activities to enhance understanding of informational text. Rather than write a traditional essay to explain a concept, students demonstrate their understanding in a nontraditional format. This technique encourages creative thinking and motivates students to reflect in unusual ways about concepts they have read.

RAFT is an acronym that stands for:

• Role of the writer: What is the writer's role: reporter, observer, eyewitness, object, number, etc.?
• Audience : Who will be reading the writing: the teacher, other students, a parent, editor, people in the community, etc.?
• Format : What is the best way to present this writing: in a letter, an article, a report, a poem, an advertisement, email, etc.?
• Topic : Who or what is the subject of this writing: a famous scientist, a prehistoric cave dweller, a character from literature, a chemical element or physical object, etc.?

The RAFT strategy encourages students to process information, rather than merely prepare answers to questions. Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content when shared. Students are more motivated to undertake the writing assignment because it can be customized to fit different learning styles.

Implementation

• Decide on an area of study currently taking place in your classroom for which you could collaborate with the students and write a class RAFT.
• Think about the concepts or process skills that you want students to learn as they read a selected passage.
• Imagine how writing in a fun way may enhance students' understanding of the topic or concept.
• Brainstorm possible roles students could assume in their writing.
• Decide who the audience would be as well as the format for writing.
• After students have finished the reading, identify the role, audience, format and topic (RAFT) for the writing assignment.
• Assign the same role for all students, or let them choose from several different roles.

Classroom Management

• Describe the various perspectives that writers must consider when completing any writing assignment.
• Have a class think-aloud to come up with ideas for the piece of writing that you will create as a group.
• Review the basic content of the reading, but allow students to select the role, audience, format, and topic to write about.
• Model how you would write in response to the prompt.
• Allow student input and creativity as you craft your piece of writing.

RAFTs help students process information by asking them to communicate an understanding with evidence from a chosen point of view to an appropriate audience using the most effective product for their purpose. The RAFT acronym stands for:

• Role – the person or object to represented
• Audience – a person or object addressed
• Format – the type of communication (product) for the chosen audience
• Topic – the point of view and content communicated (Hint: it should answer all the journalistic questions as appropriate – who, what, where, when, why, and how)

Sample RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) Ideas and Example

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RAFT Exemplar

Raft lesson plan, raft rubric, raft-role audience format topic lesson ideas.

Students use the format of RAFT to help with their writing skills in their ELA courses. 

Mediawan Rights Banks On Agility, Premium Content to Step Up Global Ambitions

By Ben Croll

• Digital Platform ‘The Gleaners and I’ Brings Agnès Varda to Next Generation of Filmmakers 23 hours ago
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• Mediawan’s Elisabeth d’Arvieu on Key to Studio’s Success: ‘We Guarantee Independence’  2 days ago

Mediawan Rights, the distribution arm of the wider media group, manages scripted, unscripted, format and feature documentary sales, keying European content onto international airwaves. And if initially heritage titles, foreign-language fare and time-tested perennials made up much of the catalogue, the group’s expanding footprint and well-capitalized partnerships promise a new yield of premium fare developed in-house and marked by global ambitions.

Popular on Variety

To that end, Mediawan inked a €100 million co-development deal with equity partner Entourage Ventures in 2023, signing a multi-year pact to finance and shepherd scripted, animated and nonfiction series in order to gain ease and agility. “A partner like Entourage gives us speed and striking power for more ambitious projects,” says Vleeschhouwer. “While the deal itself requires us to be more of an investor, partner and co-producer than a pure distributor. We have to be extremely reactive in a constantly evolving market.”

Last year, the partners launched the Secuoya Studios-produced “Zorro,” while developing the literary adaption “Civilizations” and teeing-up the English-language thriller “Kabul,” which is now shooting. Among the most ambitious titles born of the pact is “The Count of Monte-Cristo,” an eight-part adaptation led by Sam Claflin and Jeremy Irons, and helmed by two-time Palme d’Or winner Bille August.

“This is exactly the type of content we’re aiming for,” says Vleeschhouwer. “The series is timeless and evergreen; it will be an event in the forthcoming year, and will remain just as powerful in a decade’s time. And that reflects our own day-to-day work supporting talent and creating heritage, value and IPs that will endure.”   

Of course, the Mediawan Rights CEO is wary of a one-size-fits all method, emphasizing agility in languages, territories, and partners, and opting for a unique launch strategy tailor-made for each project. Today, in-group productions account for 50% of Mediawan Rights’ distribution activity – though Vleeschhouwer is hardly averse to finding synergistic opportunities with the third-party producers that make up the other half.

“We’re open to all content that’s going to stay relevant,” says Vleeschhouwer. “We think linear, we think platforms, we think FAST, we think VOD – our aim is to have a catalog that can reach all audiences through any use. An audiovisual work only lives when it’s broadcast.”

On the film front, the commercial arm specializes in feature docs with auteur pedigree, recently landing a raft of sales for Oliver Stone’s Venice-selected “Nuclear Now” and now accompanying Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” on a festival tour that kicked off with a special jury prize in Sundance.

And by way of agility, Vleeschhouwer and team have made scripted formats a key part of their approach, tripling sales in recent years by targeting markets that ready-made series couldn’t reach.

“Formats have allowed us to exploit our catalogue on wider basis and reach countries where the ready-made would not sell,” says Vleeschhouwer, pointing toward examples like the French series “Philharmonia,” which inspired the Korean remake “Maestra: Strings of Truth” in quick succession. “In less than a year [after the format sale] the program was on the air. And in a market with less funding and greater uncertainty, having a track record of successful formats can save time and money. We can reassure our producer partners, and [in turn] help them to be extremely agile as well.”

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