Effective teamwork strategy: Collaboration on authentic ELA projects
To be truly effective, teamwork in the English or composition
classroom should be directed toward accomplishment of at
least two of the teacher's course objectives.
It is silly for writing teachers to waste time on team-building
activities when they could teach teamwork at the same time
they apply thebenefits of teamwork to authentic
writing tasks.
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No English language arts teacher I know has enough time to devote
even one full period to teaching that promotes learning of only
one course objective regardless of how important that objective
is.
Team skills require practice by teams
Basketball coaches do not limit their presentation of how to win
basketball games to one lecture session about playing basketball.
They organize team practice sessions strategically with an eye to
having the team win basketball games.
Savvy writing teachers also focus team practice sessions strategically
with an eye to having the team come out on top in the writing assignments
competition.
Choose ELA team activities wisely
Authentic ELA team activities allow students to learn collaboratively
some aspect of the ELA curriculum. (Investigation of how language
changes is an authentic ELA topic; investigation of climate change
in the rain forests is not an authentic ELA topic.)
Carefully chosen and implemented, an authentic team activity can
allow the writing teacher to:
Broaden the students' audience.
Introduce material that would be too difficult or time-consuming
for students to study individually.
Choosing unsuitable activities for the students or attempting team
activities without teaching team behavior and monitoring team performance
can have negative effects:
Some students will suffer hurt feelings.
Class time will be wasted.
No improvement in student writing will occur.
No effective teamwork will occur.
In every aspect of teaching writing, teaching students about
an activity is less effective than teaching students to perform
the activity. If you want students to learn to work together effectively
in teams, you need to give them team situations in which
they learn to work effectively in teams.
