By teaching ESL for 4 years now I know how important it is to model for my students. I make sure that first I do, then "we do", next "two do" or if not possible "you do" model. It is still very hard for me to teach writing this way. The author of Writing Essentials stresses how important it is to first demonstarte, then have a shared demonstration, next guided practice, onto independent practice, and finally a celebration and sharing.
Our school district recently went through a KAGAN training and we learned about the importance of classroom community building and team building within the classroom. According to Routman, shared writing is powerful for building classroom community. I am curious to know how often shared writing should be done. Do you need to model everyday? Just some lingiring questions that will hopefully be answered throughout the book.
Kagan is such a great program. They diffinitely promote cooperative learning in a community.
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