Text Chats
Overview
Bringing students' every day literacy practice of texting into the classroom provides regular, low-stakes practice communicating with authentic audiences. In chats about what they are reading and studying, students can practice Composition skills and view models of how others convey ideas through writing. When students with different Primary Languages text chat in English with each other in real-time, research has shown their complexity and sophistication of language use increases.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Learn different ways to use texting in the classroom, such as re-creating dialogue from a piece of literature in everyday language. Texting can also be used to give students time to think about their answers, increasing positive Emotion and bringing more students into discussions.
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Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
See how to set up discussion forums in Google Classroom that allow students to see others' responses and write back, increasing Motivation. Using this free tool, teachers can easily integrate both synchronous and asynchronous written interaction into their students' writing practice.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Cooperative Learning Strategies
Students practice making and finding meaning in texts through book discussions moderated by teachers to varying degrees.
When peers are able to work together to plan, draft, edit, and revise during the Composition process, their writing quality improves.
Flexible grouping is a classroom practice that temporarily places students together in given groups to work together, with the purpose of achieving a given learning goal or activity.
As students move through multimodal stations pertaining to a particular unit, the social and physical nature of the activity supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
When students provide constructive feedback on each other's work, they learn to give relevant suggestions, receive specific ways to improve their writing, and engage in Metacognition.
Having students teach their knowledge, skills, and understanding to their classmates strengthens learning and increases Motivation.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Think-pair-share encourages meaningful student discussion by allowing for extra processing time and multiple shares.
Writing conferences allow students to fully immerse, share, reflect, and receive feedback during the writing process, promoting Motivation for continuing the sometimes lengthy revision process that occurs in the upper grades.
