First Source
September 6, 2006 at 3:32 pm 1 comment
Learning Through Collaborative Writing. By: Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle. Reading, Apr2002, Vol. 36 Issue 1, p4, 7p; (AN 6316145)
As I was searching through many different articles I found that a lot of them dealt with elementary to high school teachers using collaborative writing in the classroom. Even though we may be discussing Collaborative writing with higher level students I thought this article discussed why collaborative writing is used in general (It is more of a base).
The teacher has an activity where the class is given a short story. The class is then told to retell the story. What the group does first is analyzes the story, what are the main points/elements of it, then “breathe life back into them and give them a new voice.” An outline is then given that list the main parts of the story and possibly even key words that are used. No other directions are given, and the class is set free to certain areas. The article later goes on to explain what the class came up with for their story, but more importantly what they learned.
People have different interpretations of things and read things differently. Is there always a right way? No, not necessarily. The class also had to read their stories out loud, which gave them an audience and feed back from the rest of the group. One of the things the class found is that many people were repetitive mentioning the same thing and sometimes never moving on. Which is where collaboration comes into play; the writer is able to use that feedback and if perhaps someone else has the same thoughts they can put them together and create something better.
Even though the teacher uses a short story as her example of how collaborating writing works, it can work in other areas too. I think that our project is very similar in the fact that we need to use the same methods to do research. We are given a broad topic, yet once we come up with the main points and focus of it, we will be well on our way. Having people assigned to different areas and then sharing them and coming up with something concrete is what will make this project great.
Key Terms/Phrases: Dynamics of listening, motivate, re-read
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1. Jill Is Thinking . . . « Dr. Dan | September 8, 2006 at 12:43 am
[...] It looks like Jill already has a few thoughts about how we might progress once we reach our drafting stage.In a post about her first researched source, she points to an interesting group outlining activity and shares the idea that we might assign individuals to write different sections of our article once our group has arrived at that article’s central message. [...]