And since these journals are usually not graded, they are free to express themselves without the pressure of worrying about how their writing looks, how things are spelled, or how much they are writing. They are simply learning how to get things out of their heads and down onto paper. Once they have several entries, she encourages them to pick an entry to expand into a poem, a story, or a memoir to be produced as a polished work. Most important of all, by choosing what they want to share with a larger audience from entries they have made from their own observations, children are learning that these observations are vital and worth sharing. There are many ways to incorporate collaborative writing into the classroom.
Collaboration can be between two students, a group of students, or a class as a whole.
It can be done with paper and pencil, with a word processor, or on the Internet. The combinations are endless. At the same time as students must learn that what they have to share with an audience as an author is important, they must also learn that what their fellow classmates have to share is just as important. This can be taught through collaboration. Collaboration may be two students working together to produce one story, each taking different parts to write and then combining the parts together, or it may be one student starting a story and then each member of the class, in turn, getting a chance to add to it.