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Writing A Cooperative Class Story: Suggested Grades 3+ Method

The document describes two cooperative writing activities: 1) A class writes a collaborative story by taking turns adding sentences, then illustrating or editing the completed story. 2) Students examine comic strips, create a new character for their favorite strip maintaining the plot and characters, and display their comics as a class publication.

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Simona Symonyci
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51 views3 pages

Writing A Cooperative Class Story: Suggested Grades 3+ Method

The document describes two cooperative writing activities: 1) A class writes a collaborative story by taking turns adding sentences, then illustrating or editing the completed story. 2) Students examine comic strips, create a new character for their favorite strip maintaining the plot and characters, and display their comics as a class publication.

Uploaded by

Simona Symonyci
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Writing a Cooperative Class Story

Suggested Grades 3+
Method
Ask each student to take out a clean piece of writing paper and a pencil, and put their name
on the back of it.
Then give students 5 minutes to write a beginning of a story, or as much as they can in 5
minutes.
At the end of this time direct the students to pass their papers in a given order (eg:pass your
paper to the student behind you).
Have the students read the story that has been started and continue it for the next 5 minutes.
At the end of this time, again have the students pass the papers in the same pattern as
before.
The students now read their new story. Give them 5 minutes write a conclusion for it.
Extensions: Pass the story again and ask students to draw an illustration that would
sum the story up.
Pass the story again and have the students edit the story that they received.

Writing Comics
Suggested
3+
Grad
es
Objective

Students will examine the characteristics of and write their own


comics based on an already popular comic.

Materials

a variety of comics from newspapers and books


drawing paper

Method

crayons, pencil crayons, or markers


Have students examine the comic strips that you collected.
Ask students to name their favorite comic strips and describe

what they like best about the characters and the plot lines in
the strips.
Have students create their own character to be introduced as a
newcomer to their favorite comic strip, keeping in mind the
current plot line of the comic strip and the characteristics of the
characters. Or, have students simply continue the plot line of
the comic.

Display the comics as a class funny page.

[Teaching_Composition] cooperative writing

First, I'd be careful to distinguish between collaborative and


cooperative learning. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about
definitions--in my opinion, they are not synonyms. Students can
"collaborate" such as peer reviewing each others' drafts, but cooperative
learning involves task specialization and accountablilty for each member on
a single problem-solving task such as writing an argumenative paper. Each
student is required to perform a separate function, but ultimately come
together and negotiate the final draft. (They share the final paper grade
equally.)
For example, I have groups of three students write a cooperative,
argumentative paper. One student is responsible for researching the pro,
another is responsible for researching the con, and the third, the
negotiator, is ultimately responsible for making certain the paper gets
written and turned in. True cooperation, though, only occurs when all three
students work together composing the final draft. The "pro" and "con"
students must supply the info and develop an outline (I grade this) showing
the major claims, minor claims, and what support they would use if they
were actually writing a separate paper. The pro and con students also must
make a five minute presentation to the class arguing from their pro or con
perspective.
But from my experience, true cooperation only happens when all three
students sit down together and negotiate which side they will present, what
will be emphasized, how to work the opposite side into the paper and refute
it, etc. (Actually, the best organizational model I've found for this so
far is in Aristotle's "Rhetoric.") Finally, for the next papers all the
tasks rotate until each student has been a negotiator, pro, and con
researcher. This may all sound confusing, but if you will read R. E.
Slavin's research and the Johnson Bros. research to start, you'll see that
cooperative learning is one of the most researched areas of learning
--plenty of stuff out there but not in argumentative writing.
By the way, I performed a quantitative study comparing cooperative writers
to independent writers and found no difference in performance and
attitudes. Cooperative learning, as far as improving student performance
and attitudes toward writing may simply be of little benefit. More
research needs to be conducted. Please let the list know what successes (or
failures, for that matter) you have had, and I'd especially like to hear
from anyone else who may have conducted a quantitative study comparing
cooperative writers to independent writers on the college level.

Teaching_Composition] cooperative writing


I'm interested in Barry's definition of collaboratin and cooperation. In my
experience, there are an many definitions of these terms as there are the
people using them. Ted Panitz defines cooperation as activity that
facilitates transmission of foundational knowledge (like historical facts)
and collaboration as activity that facilitates discovery of non-foundational
knowledge (inquiry based, derived from "critical" thinking). The first
looks like a teacher centered classroom, the second like a student (or
subject centered) classroom. Austin and Baldwin define collaboration as
when two or more people are working toward a common goal. All of the above
made sense to me, as do other definitions.
I have a question, though. If the quantitative data show that attitudes and
perfomance don't differ whether students write together or independently (if
independent writing is really possible), why do you (Barry) continue to ask
your students to work cooperatively? My data, which is qualitative, shows
that collaborative writing can make a marked difference in attitudes.
Students develop trusting and respectful relationships with their peers,
become aware of and develop confidence in their knowledge and instincts
about their own writing, feel less fearful of writing (partly because they
realize they don't have to write alone). I don't know that the products
themselves are that much "better", but "weaker" writers benefit from working

with group members who are "stronger" writers, and they are able to move
toward a writer's identity by just being part of a group of writers in the
classroomm.
_____________________________________________
Teaching_Composition maillist - [email protected]
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If you no longer wish to recieve this mailing please go to
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SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.

General classroom instruction, accommodations


Teaching phonological awareness, reading
Teaching spelling
Teaching oral and written language
Teaching organization, active reading/ listening, and study skills
Teaching mathematics
Teaching social/ behavior skills

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