Writing groups have the potential to be positive academic communities, but often become problematic spaces where students go to get their writing "fixed." In this article, the authors draw on literature from peer response groups as well as social justice pedagogies to explore how teachers might develop these groups as spaces for student…

Many students struggle when they are asked to write. They may feel the lack of ideas, or they believe their ideas are not good enough. Prewriting techniques (e.g., brainstorming, clustering, and freewriting) help students develop their ability to think and their confidence in generating ideas. Collaborative prewriting activities expand students'…

This book presents an international range of conversation analytic (CA) studies of classroom interaction which all discuss their empirical findings in terms of their theoretical and methodological contribution to the field of second language studies and their potential pedagogical relevance. The volume is thus unique in its focus on the…

See, Say, Write is an adaptable classroom writing routine that teachers can use across a range of activities in the preschool classroom. This preschool writing routine offers an opportunity for teachers to build on a shared experience through engagement in rich conversation and writing. After a shared experience, teachers will provide a visual…

Describes how to conduct a collaborative group story-writing session with preschool children and encourage the creativity of the group. (MM)

Outlines the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program, a sequenced and structured reading/language arts program used by elementary level students at Bracher School in Santa Clara, California. Describes several cooperative reading and writing activities used in this program. (MM)

In "Rhetoric, Discovery and Change" (1970), R. Young, A. Becker, and K. Pike took Carl Rogers' empathetic approach out of the context of one-on-one therapy and put it into the writing classroom. They proposed the now standard formulaic structure of argumentation which emphasizes a strong thesis up front, a detailed account of the…

Describes "cooperative poetry," a group poetry-writing exercise combining brainstorming, rehearsing, choral reading, assisted reading, memorization, sequencing, and vocabulary development, as well as providing an opportunity for group cooperation. (MM)

Describes a poetry-writing formula that guarantees successful results for writing poems at the elementary level. (MM)

Describes an activity that develops student writers' individual voices, even when collaborating closely in a writing workshop. Notes that the writing workshop allows students access to each other's writing processes and encourages consensus on revision directions. (MM)

Discusses teaching students in the collaborative writing classroom to acknowledge influences and credit sources. Offers classroom exercises as well as options for acknowledging sources. (SR)

Presents a story-writing activity to encourage the relationship between children's experiences with literature and their ability to write. Emphasizes the importance of having students work in cooperative groups. (MG)

Class collaboration and small group composition illustrate the embedding of cooperative learning theory in whole language classroom events. Through this experience all students participate in active learning. The teacher has a weighty role in decision making, setting of the lesson, assigning roles, and monitoring segments of cooperative learning…

Discusses how collaborative writing can be a tool for activating students' multiple voices and multiple versions of self and the world within the classroom. Describes three collaborative writing projects in which special education students discussed and wrote about important knowledge that was formed in their own contradictory moments. (MM)

Describes a second-grade class project in which students wrote a fictional biography in response to several books read aloud to them. Enumerates the 9 steps in the process, and presents selections (chapters 1 and 10) from the book "The Man in the Walnut Shell." (SR)