CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.6

Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

Strategy: Teaching with Blogs (Ramsey)

Detailed Description: Students will be able to incorporate the internet, publish writing, and interact with others’ writings as well using blogs.

Practical Application: Students will be assigned blogs to write periodically that cover what they have learned in class or some other creative piece that they must publish. They then will reply to their peers’ posts as well, creating collaboration and constructive criticism.

TRAP: This particular blog strategy was written by Traci Gardner, an instructor at Virginia Tech that has also worked with National Council of Teachers of English. This article was published by the NCTE on the ReadWriteThink.org website.

Gardner, Traci. “Teaching with Blogs.” National Council of Teachers of English, in ReadWriteThinki.org. Retrieved from http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/teaching-with-blogs-30108.html.

Strategy:  Cooperative learning through Interactive Journals (Chiles)

Detailed Description: With an interactive journal, ideally, students each have their own spiral or composition notebook that they can split down the middle. The students split each paper that they complete a journal entry on down the middle. The left side of the paper is for the student to complete his or her work on. The right half is for those who interact, teachers or students or parents, to provide comments/feedback on the students’ work. This strategy can work just as effectively with technology.  As students interact with teachers, they get individualized feedback on their specific work and as they interact with different students they provide feedback, gain new ideas, foster cooperative skills, and become more aware of what they are and are not doing.  

Practical Application: Students can use Google Docs as their interactive journals to write certain parts of their paper that they would like to receive feedback on: the introduction, conclusion, or detailed body paragraphs. Teachers could either have the students complete the writing for homework or have them work during class. Whatever they have written in their journal, they’d bring up the document and leave it open on their desk. Students would then get up and move to 3 random desks to read and provide feedback on the excerpts that they’ve read. They can choose to revise/ edit it, provide suggestions of what they would add/what they wouldn’t include, or provide positive feedback to the journal that they are interacting with. After the students have interacted with each other, they can go back to their seats and read what’s been written in their journals about their submission. At the end of the process, students should walk away with a reassurance or a new mindset about what they’ve written.

TRAP:  Cooperative learning is a strategy is one of Marzano’s nine instructional strategies, Robert J. Marzano is a renowned educational researcher. His research-based strategies were cited in articles he co-wrote in 2000 and wrote himself in 2003. They were cited by Dr. Kimberly Tyson, a seasoned educator and literacy consultant who is an advocate for research-based instruction. The intentions of both educators were to help teacher facilitate learning by making them aware of effective research-based strategies.