Cooperative Writing Activities
Overview
When peers work cooperatively to practice writing letters, words, and eventually longer sentences, their Foundational Writing Skills, including spelling and writing quality, improve. Cooperative emergent writing activities, such as having learners practice letter formation and sounds together, can support Alphabet Knowledge and Phonological Awareness. Social engagement can increase many students' Motivation, and with appropriate structure, peer discussion and feedback can improve students' Vocabulary, Syntax, and Verbal Reasoning. Having students write letters together can also improve Handwriting Skills.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch as these first grade students participate in peer editing. For emergent writing, teacher supervision and modeling can help structure these activities for maximum benefit.
Design It into Your Product
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 Google Docs can support collaborative writing. Their features that enhance collaboration include the ability for students to comment on other's writing, track changes in suggestion mode, and have multiple people work on one document at the same time.
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
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 walk through stations working in small groups, the social and physical nature of the learning supports deeper understanding.
As students work with and process information by discussing, organizing, and sharing it together, they deepen their understanding.
To promote acceptance of learning diversity, students explore learning tools and strategies to see how they work and why they and others might use them.
When students explain to others, they deepen their understanding and gain confidence in their learning.
Respectful redirection, or error correction, outlines a clear and concise way that educators can provide feedback on behaviors that need immediate correction, in a positive manner.
Students develop reading skills by listening to and speaking with others in informal ways.
