I have created a Google Doc to communicate with and teach my students. This will allow me to share video lessons, monitor students work, and provide feedback, and it will also provide ample opportunities for students to communication with each other. With the comment feature students will be able to comment on each others' paragraphs and other entries on the Google Doc to show their learning and understanding. This feature will encourage students to write stronger paragraphs knowing their peers will be looking a their work. With the feedback from their peers they will be able to make adjustments to their writing. My school has provided each student with their own Google account. They are able to access this Google Doc through their Drive, via the Google Doc invite I sent to their email, or via the link on our class blog page.
Students will be asked to work on this project a minimum of once a week. The lessons will vary between a 15-minute lesson/practice to practice at home for their homework. This project will last for 5 weeks. I will be on maternity leave for the entirety of this project so this technology choice is ideal since I will not be at school. My replacement while I am gone has agreed to allow the class 15 minutes prior to their typing class to work on their paragraphing. Before I left last week I set up the project with my class to make sure they knew how to access the Google Doc and also let them try it for two 15 minutes periods. This past weekend almost the entire class went on the Google Doc to finish what they started! So far it’s a big hit.
In researching my WPP I went to several resources and I will continue to research this as the project unfolds. Initially I spoke with my tech team about how to create a class blog within our grade level website. We spoke about several other options since we want to make sure students can each edit the Google Doc and comment on each others' work since editing rights were an issue with our Google site. After deciding the Google Doc is one of the better choices for this project I next researched other examples of using a Google Doc in the classroom and more specifically for collaborative writing. I found on gettingsmart.com an article titled 6 Powerful Google Docs Features to Support the Collaborative Writing Process, by Susan Oxnevad. This article has several tips that I had not considered until now, such as the research tool and the smart spell checker with grammar support. I have also researched videos that support teaching paragraph writing. Brain Pop Jr has a great student friendly video that allows students to watch again and again, to start and stop as needed, to view notes highlighting the key ideas, and also to use the closed captioning feature if needed such as for English language learners. This site is colorful, simple and features follow-up activities as well. I will continue to research other resources that will support the remainder of the lessons I plan to teach.
I plan to teach at least four more lessons (one a week) on writing paragraphs including identifying features of a paragraph through an interactive quiz. Other lessons will give examples of paragraphing for both fiction and nonfiction work and ask students to try this as well. Students will have opportunities to write their own paragraphs about one common topic and then compare their work on the Google Doc. Another lesson will be students typing a paragraph they have written in the past into the Google Doc and use a guide to edit their writing. Most lessons will require peer-to-peer communication on the Google Doc.
I will know that this project has worked both through the student work on the Google Doc and their other class writing. I will take record of their progress and success through their Writer’s Workshop notebooks, published stories, and essays. If more lessons are needed I will provide more time for learning about paragraphs via the class Google Doc.