Collaborative Writing

 When done well, collaborative writing can expose students to other ways of writing, can help them to learn different ways of working with writing and can apprentice them to more capable peers.  When left to their own devices, students often take the easy way out and don’t get the benefit of this type of activity.  I use this activity at the end of the term because it gives me more time to go over portfolios.  One very firm rule that I enforce is that all of the work has to be done in class.  This eliminates most of the problems with this type of work, and a lot of the stress of trying to find common meeting times and adding something else to the very overloaded end of a semester. I include here a description of the project and some activities I use to prepare students for writing together.