Using Small Group Activities to Motivate Students Collaborative

Using Small Group Activities to Motivate Students Collaborative Writing Activity for English

This session is intended to provide: • An example of a small group writing activity that can be used in class. • Time for teachers to experience the small group activity together. • Time for teachers to reflect on how the activity could be used with their classes and what adaptations they think could be useful and important.

If our goal is independent writing, why have students write as a group?

Benefits of Collaborative Writing • Addresses students’ desire for community • Helps students who have difficulty getting started writing • Provides peer modeling to help struggling writers • Involves collaborative discussion that can help improve individual thinking and writing

Discussion of Prior Experiences What kinds of group writing exercises have you attempted with classes in the past, if any? What was experience like for students? For you as a teacher?

Group Paragraph Writing Activity structures process for group of students to collaborate in writing a paragraph to analyze a short text. Each group member assigned a role for guiding discussion and for writing one or two of the sentences: a topic sentence, 3 supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. Process involves group brainstorming, suggestions for revisions, and both individual and corporate responsibility – all in a tightly structured way.

Preparing Class for Activity (in Advance) • Conduct a group paragraph writing activity as a whole class, modeling the steps (and individual roles one would assume in a group) • Conduct the activity with class broken into small groups, modeling the roles for each person in the small group (while all groups are doing the same thing at the same time, with teacher direction) • Once students have learned the role expectations, they can work within their independent groups, with less teacher direction as teacher circulates to help groups individually as needed

Try Out the Activity as a Group Goal: Write a paragraph together explaining the main idea of the Langston Hughes poem (see sheet). Each group member has a discussion and writing role. Follow the order of tasks on the directions sheet to produce your paragraph.

Debrief • What did you like about the activity? Anything you did not like? • How do you think this will work with students? • What might you need to change/adapt to make this work in your classroom? • How likely are you to try something similar (with a text from your specific curriculum)?

Teacher Reflection Use the questions to reflect on how you might use ideas from today in your own classrooms