Collaborative Writing discussed in Corey's post--Write Arounds,Read Arounds,focused Peer Interaction, WTL/LTW

Even though, as Kurt pointed out, the studies in Corey's post refer to adolescents and not elementary students, I believe there is tremendous value in peer interaction as it relates to the teaching of writing even at the elementary level.  At the Southeast Regional Principal Meeting in-service I attended with Kurt in January, the facilitator had principals reflect on the use of a schoolwide  RACE (Restate, Answer, Cite, Explain) strategy and questions they had about it. In a write-around activity, principals were given only a few minutes to respond, they wrote a question/reflection and then passed their paper to the person next to them  and had to respond quickly in writing to the other person's comment. This continued until all four people seated at the table had responded to one another. This activity had high engagement and could be used in a class to help build writing fluency.  For example, a teacher could seat students in groups of 4, ask a guiding question, have students respond in a sentence of two and then pass their paper to the next person and respond to their writing until each student has 3 responses to their original paper.  Even with younger students with emerging literacy skills, this could be valuable. It is not an editing activity, but a fluency building activity that also helps strengthen content knowledge (WTL--Writing to Learn/LTW-- Learning to Write movement).  It could also be used for creative writing activities, etc.

How many times in a day do we ask students questions, have them raise their hands for responses and only a few students are selected to be called on? How much more effective might it be to ask a question, have them write a quick response, then have a few share their written responses. Some students don't process so quickly and need more time to reflect before responding.  In guided reading, when students are looking at pictures and predicting what will happen in a story or if you are using a word splash for students to predict what might happen in a text prior to reading, instead of having them respond orally, have them do a quick write. WTL has great implications not only for improving writing fluency but for also strengthening content knowledge.

Read-arounds are also great ways of building student engagement, particularly when students are trained on a rubric ahead of time so they know what they are looking for in a paper. Again, in first grade, second, etc. this may be a very simple rubric and a very short writing piece, nevertheless, it engages students (they love to read each other's writing) and employs higher order thinking skills of applying, synthesizing, and evaluating (Bloom's taxonomy).  Just as adults do a practice read and eval training for inter-rater reliability before they score papers, it is important that students do a teacher-led practice evaluation  to establish inter-rater reliability prior to peer scoring of writing.