The “Group Investigation Expands Cooperative Learning” model, described by Yael Sharan and Shlomo Sharan, is a type of collaborative learning that groups students for research based on their common interest in a topic. The group members work together to plan the research topic, and then they divide the teamwork among individual members for independent individual research, and finally, the group synthesizes and summarizes all members’ research, and presents the results to the class. During the whole process, the teacher works only as a guide, providing a wide range of topics for students to choose from, brainstorming and stimulating students to think and raise questions about the topic, and helping them to pick a topic. The teacher may also work with the students to prepare the final evaluation standard. It is a truly group work.
There are six stages in the process, which can last from a week to a few months:
Stage 1: Identify the topic and form the student group.
Stage 2: Plan the investigation in groups. Present subtopics. The team decides which to pick for research, and how to cooperate. Then, internally organize the subtopics.
Stage 3: Carry out the investigation (both collectively and individually).
Stage 4: Prepare a final report.
Stage 5: Present the final report.
Stage 6: Evaluation.
According to the authors’ research data, Group Investigation works much better than the traditional classroom-teaching model. It is efficient because it gives students more control over their learning. Students have the freedom to choose a topic they like, and group together based on their common interests, and to plan and carry out the research on their own. They teach and help each other in order to complete the final project. It has the advantage of both teamwork and individual work. It includes contributions from all the students in the group and is a result of the collective wisdom and effort of the entire team.
The limitation of this model is that it takes a rather long time to prepare and complete. It needs careful planning and plenty of flexible time. It will be difficult for a subject teacher who has to cope with the pressures of a rigid curriculum required by the school and prepare students for standardized exams. It also requires the students to have basic vocabulary, language and analytical skills to conduct the group discussion and research. This is especially true with a foreign language class. Therefore, it is not a good choice for very small kids, for example, K to 2nd graders, because they lack analytical and synthesizing skills to do the research. For younger children, a short collaborative learning activity in class is preferable; for example, read to each other during a reading class, or discuss in groups about what to write in an essay during a writing class.
From my own teaching experience, Group Investigation suits intermediate and advanced level language learners more than it does beginning language learners. I tried a similar method in my intermediate college level Mandarin course and it worked well. The way I did it was to have students give an oral presentation in pairs after every unit’s study. I gave topics related to the unit to students, and paired students up based on their language level. Each pair of students had to work out the draft for the oral presentation (a dialogue), and make sure the draft was grammatically correct. They then practiced outside the class; and finally presented to the class. Students who were on lower language levels in the class later on told me that it was very challenging for them. However, they got help from their partners, and learned a lot by doing it. What I did mainly was brainstorming at the beginning of the project and correcting their drafts during the process.
Looking back, it was a very fulfilling experience though I did not know much about collaborative learning then. I only wanted to give students chances to speak the target language in an authentic manner. Now I can see that it was successful largely because it involved and stimulated students to help each other and teach each other in a collaborative manner. Indeed, during and after my teaching the class, the atmosphere in the class was very relaxed and students usually were willing to talk because they interacted with one anther well in every unit presentation. They felt that they were sitting with their friends in the class, not strangers. My teaching would have been more effective if I had known more about Group Investigation projects. Because in the final survey I did with my students at the end of the semester, some of them said they wished they had had more chances to talk in the target language in class; Group Investigation would have created a perfect opportunity for them to speak to each other during both the discussions and final presentations.
However, I feel that Group Investigation, a long-term project that requires certain language skills in the target language, does not suit beginning language learners well. Beginning language learners need more chances to hear authentic language from the teacher, and practice under the teacher’s observation and corrective feedback. In some ESL beginning lessons (in both elementary and middle/high school settings) that I have observed, during the group work, the students were unable to conduct the discussions in English, instead, they discussed the topics in their native languages.
Recently, I went for a campus visit at a private boarding school in New York for an ESL teacher’s position. During my visit, nearly every faculty member or administrator that I met mentioned the urgent need to blend the international ESL students with American students in school. (Each group counts for about half of the student population.) The fact is that the international students tend to group together during and after classes, without opportunities to improve their English. Because of this, they also have difficulty with their content course, because they are not proficient enough in English to grasp the material as readily as the American students.
I thought about this situation and about how Cooperative Learning might be helpful, and wrote an email to the principal with my suggestions:
1) peer tutoring program
Pair the ESL learners with the American students one-to-one, based on the students’ mutual needs (like an exchange tutoring). For example, math/science/art for English.
If an ESL student is good at math, science or arts, he or she can be paired with an American student who is good at English but needs help with math, science or arts. Research shows that tutoring is the best way to learn. Give the ESL students opportunity to receive language help, meanwhile, give them the opportunity to use the English language by being tutors. School credits also can be given to American students who qualify and volunteer to be English tutors after one semester.
2) collaborative learning
Teachers can implement the collaborative learning model, which involve many collaborative learning activities among students. For example, short-term or long-term learning projects involving students’ collaborations in and outside class. The purpose is to blend students.
3) Have more ice-breaking activities or other fun activities in content classes, especially at the beginning of a new academic year. This way, the students will get to know each other quickly and be friends outside the classroom. This will also create a stress-free atmosphere in the class so the ESL students will be more willing to talk in class. It is also a good way of blending students.
With the tool of Group Investigation in hand, I feel I will do better with my future teaching, whether it be ESL or Mandarin teaching.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching, as it says in its name, is all about communication: the goal and objective are communication, the method of practicing is communication, the learning materials are authentic written or non-written language products from real world, and the assessment is also by assessing how efficient the learner can be when communicating in the target language.
The reading of Richards and Rodgers’ book "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2001, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.) has cleared some of my long-time confusion about what exactly communicative language method is, which I had heard repeatedly during my teacher’s training and at all kinds of workshops but I could not grasp what it was exactly. It is about delivering meaningful messages to one another in social context. It is emphasizing the social function of the languages rather than its surface form.
More importantly, my reading of the chapter has equipped me with a number of useful classroom activities that prompts and initiates communication and negotiation in class. For example, an authentic event provoking conversation by any of the following scenarios: a talking about personal identification, a customer visit, a supplier visit, a shopping experience, a travel experience, describing something, asking for information, providing information, expressing emotions and feelings, and agree and disagree with an opinion. In a word, it can be anything that happens in our daily life that engages human interactions. Therefore, the class activities can be anything that evokes a conversation. For example, a shared reading and a discussion followed, a role play, an imaginary scenario and acting it out, an inquiry from either the teacher or the students, a grouped study, a silent reading or a “reading to” activity followed by comprehension questions, and reading the authentic materials that the students and the teacher collect together in class.
At any rate, the Communicative Language Teaching is the golden tool that I have ever learned so far as a language teacher. I am very thankful.
The reading of Richards and Rodgers’ book "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2001, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.) has cleared some of my long-time confusion about what exactly communicative language method is, which I had heard repeatedly during my teacher’s training and at all kinds of workshops but I could not grasp what it was exactly. It is about delivering meaningful messages to one another in social context. It is emphasizing the social function of the languages rather than its surface form.
More importantly, my reading of the chapter has equipped me with a number of useful classroom activities that prompts and initiates communication and negotiation in class. For example, an authentic event provoking conversation by any of the following scenarios: a talking about personal identification, a customer visit, a supplier visit, a shopping experience, a travel experience, describing something, asking for information, providing information, expressing emotions and feelings, and agree and disagree with an opinion. In a word, it can be anything that happens in our daily life that engages human interactions. Therefore, the class activities can be anything that evokes a conversation. For example, a shared reading and a discussion followed, a role play, an imaginary scenario and acting it out, an inquiry from either the teacher or the students, a grouped study, a silent reading or a “reading to” activity followed by comprehension questions, and reading the authentic materials that the students and the teacher collect together in class.
At any rate, the Communicative Language Teaching is the golden tool that I have ever learned so far as a language teacher. I am very thankful.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Language Teaching Methodology
I want to talk about a few “popular ideas about language learning” that are most useful for me:
1. Language is learned through imitation. However, it is the learner who decides what to imitate. The power of imitation, although important as a basic tool for learning a language, is limited and it is not universal. It does not fit everyone. What is more important than imitation is to use the target language to communicate meaningfully and authentically. This makes complete sense. No matter how well an apprentice learns, it does not mean much unless she puts her skills into practice.
2. Feedback – I have always found that corrective feedbacks most effective in mastering a language. This is why adult English learners, including me, spend a much longer time learning English compared with young children. Still, adult learners may never be able to master the target language because they lack the privilege that the young students have at school - formally receiving corrective feedbacks from professional teachers.
3. The influence of the learner’s first language can be good and bad at the same time. It is good because it provides a storehouse of knowledge about language and a reference system that the learner can always go back to. It is bad because the learner tends to copy the same structures and grammatical rules from her native language to the target language. I have witnessed both children and adult ESL learners make many of the same mistakes.
4. The most effective way of learning vocabulary is to expand it through reading in general and also through reading materials that are appropriate in level and content. This has verified what I have learned from theories, from my teaching practice and my own English learning experience. Level appropriate means the unknown words in a reading article should not exceed 90% (I have also read that it should be 95%). The idea is that there should be only a few unknown words when reading. Content appropriate means the reading materials should be interesting and meaningful.
5. The cultural diversity of today’s world has made practicality more valuable than the traditional ideas of accuracy. Because the standard for accuracy has changed, we have to be flexible with the idea of being accurate.
6. Grammar must be taught in sentence context. It definitely cannot be taught separately and isolated. This is especially true with younger children. However, no matter what age group a teacher teaches, getting students involved is a must. Otherwise, the teaching cannot go on effectively. Teaching grammar dryly and isolated from context will certainly turn students off. I asked my students whether they read the grammar notes in the textbook, and they said no unanimously.
7. Errors that students make are a resource for a teacher to understand why such errors are made. Usually, it reflects the learner is inappropriately transferring her first language patterns to a target second language and over-generalizing the second language’s rules (for example, yesterday I read this sentence from an article written by a Chinese woman: “You hurted me so much.”)
8. It is key to always have high expectation for students, and therefore to always keep the learning challenging. I have purchased a Chinese language textbook and workbook written by a New Jersey public school teacher. I chose her books because they are accessible, step by step, interesting and easy to use. It is her goal to make Chinese learning easy. However, she told me that some of her students still could not functionally communicate in Chinese after four years of studying. After receiving the books recently, I realized that they lacked challenge. The content deliberately avoids higher-level vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammars. I would have added more difficult materials to the book.
9. Cooperative learning – I have to remind myself repeatedly that I have to give students time to practice in class. I was so used to giving a teacher-centered lecture, although interactive and dialogue-based, that I tended to give very little time for students to practice. I have noticed the difference between giving more time for students to speak with each other and giving little time. Cooperative learning shifts the center from a teacher to students. It often makes the classroom more dynamic.
1. Language is learned through imitation. However, it is the learner who decides what to imitate. The power of imitation, although important as a basic tool for learning a language, is limited and it is not universal. It does not fit everyone. What is more important than imitation is to use the target language to communicate meaningfully and authentically. This makes complete sense. No matter how well an apprentice learns, it does not mean much unless she puts her skills into practice.
2. Feedback – I have always found that corrective feedbacks most effective in mastering a language. This is why adult English learners, including me, spend a much longer time learning English compared with young children. Still, adult learners may never be able to master the target language because they lack the privilege that the young students have at school - formally receiving corrective feedbacks from professional teachers.
3. The influence of the learner’s first language can be good and bad at the same time. It is good because it provides a storehouse of knowledge about language and a reference system that the learner can always go back to. It is bad because the learner tends to copy the same structures and grammatical rules from her native language to the target language. I have witnessed both children and adult ESL learners make many of the same mistakes.
4. The most effective way of learning vocabulary is to expand it through reading in general and also through reading materials that are appropriate in level and content. This has verified what I have learned from theories, from my teaching practice and my own English learning experience. Level appropriate means the unknown words in a reading article should not exceed 90% (I have also read that it should be 95%). The idea is that there should be only a few unknown words when reading. Content appropriate means the reading materials should be interesting and meaningful.
5. The cultural diversity of today’s world has made practicality more valuable than the traditional ideas of accuracy. Because the standard for accuracy has changed, we have to be flexible with the idea of being accurate.
6. Grammar must be taught in sentence context. It definitely cannot be taught separately and isolated. This is especially true with younger children. However, no matter what age group a teacher teaches, getting students involved is a must. Otherwise, the teaching cannot go on effectively. Teaching grammar dryly and isolated from context will certainly turn students off. I asked my students whether they read the grammar notes in the textbook, and they said no unanimously.
7. Errors that students make are a resource for a teacher to understand why such errors are made. Usually, it reflects the learner is inappropriately transferring her first language patterns to a target second language and over-generalizing the second language’s rules (for example, yesterday I read this sentence from an article written by a Chinese woman: “You hurted me so much.”)
8. It is key to always have high expectation for students, and therefore to always keep the learning challenging. I have purchased a Chinese language textbook and workbook written by a New Jersey public school teacher. I chose her books because they are accessible, step by step, interesting and easy to use. It is her goal to make Chinese learning easy. However, she told me that some of her students still could not functionally communicate in Chinese after four years of studying. After receiving the books recently, I realized that they lacked challenge. The content deliberately avoids higher-level vocabulary, sentence patterns and grammars. I would have added more difficult materials to the book.
9. Cooperative learning – I have to remind myself repeatedly that I have to give students time to practice in class. I was so used to giving a teacher-centered lecture, although interactive and dialogue-based, that I tended to give very little time for students to practice. I have noticed the difference between giving more time for students to speak with each other and giving little time. Cooperative learning shifts the center from a teacher to students. It often makes the classroom more dynamic.
Multiple Intelligence
Theoretically, it sounds exciting to apply MI theory in the classroom. However, in reality, it is usually unrealistic to design different activities in one short class based on each student’s talents and likes. I have found that, in practice, there are fewer differences among students’ intelligences than stated in MI theory. Research says that about ninety-five percent of people are visual learners, and I have found that nearly all of my students have responded to auditory, musical, and kinesthetic teaching approaches, in addition to visual methods.
Human natures are more or less similar. This belief underlies my opinion on MI theory in the classroom. The majority of people has five senses, with which they interact with one another and the outside world. People who seem to be more talented with one type of intelligences generally invest more time and effort on that particular intelligence.
In our actual teaching, it is impractical to design different activities for different students in a short lesson lasting only for forty-five minutes or one hour based on the students’ learning styles. I have yet to see any teacher effectively accomplish this in an educational setting other than kindergartens and elementary schools, where the teachers are able to set up different stations for different types of learning activities due to the spatial and time advantages the teachers have. Unless a teacher has his or her own permanent classroom, and teaches the same group of students consecutively everyday, it is difficult for a teacher to have different MI activities in one short class session.
Human natures are more or less similar. This belief underlies my opinion on MI theory in the classroom. The majority of people has five senses, with which they interact with one another and the outside world. People who seem to be more talented with one type of intelligences generally invest more time and effort on that particular intelligence.
In our actual teaching, it is impractical to design different activities for different students in a short lesson lasting only for forty-five minutes or one hour based on the students’ learning styles. I have yet to see any teacher effectively accomplish this in an educational setting other than kindergartens and elementary schools, where the teachers are able to set up different stations for different types of learning activities due to the spatial and time advantages the teachers have. Unless a teacher has his or her own permanent classroom, and teaches the same group of students consecutively everyday, it is difficult for a teacher to have different MI activities in one short class session.
"Whole Language" Approach
The theory of “whole language” from “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” by Richards and Rodgers has reinforced my beliefs on some basic principles of language teaching that will help motivate the learners:
• Write for pleasure / for real communication (natural approach)
• Read for a real purpose
• Emphasize meaning and make sense of meaning; contextualize language in an authentic situation, making the expression meaningful in a social context.
• Use a student-produced text for teaching and learning
• Students have options over what they read and write
In my own teaching practice, I have been trying to apply some of the above-mentioned principles in my class, and the more I use them, the more I have found the power of them. For example, when I teach the lesson on “the home”, I use real apartment rental advertisements that I found in a Chinese newspaper (I made slight modifications to remove some unfamiliar words so the students would not be discouraged by too much new vocabulary). I found that the students were really interested in reading them.
When it comes to writing and speaking, I let students create a dialogue about dating (the unit we studied), and perform it, which was both successful and unsuccessful. It was a success because everyone was excited to perform and to be able to see his or her videotaped performance, and this motivated everyone to participate. It was not a complete success because more than sixty percent of the students wrote their scripts closely following the dialogue in the text, including the scenarios and sentence patterns. I felt this was not authentic enough. I feel that the students would not be able to apply fully what they have learned in the “real world,” and therefore, they have not mastered the content.
Some insights I had from the reading include the ideas of using students’ work and giving students options for reading and writing materials. I feel that there is still a distance from where I am now and where I should be in terms of motivating students and making my classroom truly dynamic.
There are some arguments that I disagree with from the reading. Making language meaningful and purposeful is no less significant for adults than for young children, while the author claims that it usually works only for young children. In my opinion, it is more effective to use the “whole language” approach for adults because adults learn languages with a clear purpose in an educational setting. Many of them learn a language for their career, personal needs and academic pursuits, some learn for their personal interests.
• Write for pleasure / for real communication (natural approach)
• Read for a real purpose
• Emphasize meaning and make sense of meaning; contextualize language in an authentic situation, making the expression meaningful in a social context.
• Use a student-produced text for teaching and learning
• Students have options over what they read and write
In my own teaching practice, I have been trying to apply some of the above-mentioned principles in my class, and the more I use them, the more I have found the power of them. For example, when I teach the lesson on “the home”, I use real apartment rental advertisements that I found in a Chinese newspaper (I made slight modifications to remove some unfamiliar words so the students would not be discouraged by too much new vocabulary). I found that the students were really interested in reading them.
When it comes to writing and speaking, I let students create a dialogue about dating (the unit we studied), and perform it, which was both successful and unsuccessful. It was a success because everyone was excited to perform and to be able to see his or her videotaped performance, and this motivated everyone to participate. It was not a complete success because more than sixty percent of the students wrote their scripts closely following the dialogue in the text, including the scenarios and sentence patterns. I felt this was not authentic enough. I feel that the students would not be able to apply fully what they have learned in the “real world,” and therefore, they have not mastered the content.
Some insights I had from the reading include the ideas of using students’ work and giving students options for reading and writing materials. I feel that there is still a distance from where I am now and where I should be in terms of motivating students and making my classroom truly dynamic.
There are some arguments that I disagree with from the reading. Making language meaningful and purposeful is no less significant for adults than for young children, while the author claims that it usually works only for young children. In my opinion, it is more effective to use the “whole language” approach for adults because adults learn languages with a clear purpose in an educational setting. Many of them learn a language for their career, personal needs and academic pursuits, some learn for their personal interests.
Teaching Grammar
As an English learner, I have a lot of experiences of learning grammar, most of which are negative. I spent many years learning English in China. For at least half of the time, if not more, the teachers taught grammars in a dry and deductive way. This method of teaching grammar is also what I naturally inherited and used in my teaching Mandarin. After I learned Communicative Language Learning method, I have changed my teaching approach from deductive to an inductive: instead of giving an abstract grammar rule first, I list a series of sample sentences, and let the students figure out what the grammatical rule is by asking them to write down the structure on board. I have noticed the latter approach is much more engaging than my old method.
The other good thing I have learned about teaching grammar is to teach it in context – not just any context but a meaningful context. So what I do is that I incorporate the grammar into interrogative questions associated with content of the lesson and students’ daily lives for the students to answer in every class. I have found that this approach is also quite engaging.
Grammar is only a tool for language learning, not the goal. The goal of learning a language is to acquire communicational skills. I remember that a few years ago, I went for a Mandarin teacher’s job interview. The first question that the head teacher asked was, “do you have a grammar book?” I said no and it upset her very much. I could not come up with a theory to reject her obsession on getting a grammar book. But I felt by instinct that I would not read it even if I had one. I hate to read dry grammar rules. I guess many students are the same as me. A few years have elapsed, I still do not have a grammar book and I am getting along well with teaching Mandarin. In fact, I have found that the students do not even read the grammar notes in a textbook. Human nature just rejects monotonous and isolated grammar that is disconnected from an authentic and interesting language context, just as we reject anything that is unnatural and stiff.
The other good thing I have learned about teaching grammar is to teach it in context – not just any context but a meaningful context. So what I do is that I incorporate the grammar into interrogative questions associated with content of the lesson and students’ daily lives for the students to answer in every class. I have found that this approach is also quite engaging.
Grammar is only a tool for language learning, not the goal. The goal of learning a language is to acquire communicational skills. I remember that a few years ago, I went for a Mandarin teacher’s job interview. The first question that the head teacher asked was, “do you have a grammar book?” I said no and it upset her very much. I could not come up with a theory to reject her obsession on getting a grammar book. But I felt by instinct that I would not read it even if I had one. I hate to read dry grammar rules. I guess many students are the same as me. A few years have elapsed, I still do not have a grammar book and I am getting along well with teaching Mandarin. In fact, I have found that the students do not even read the grammar notes in a textbook. Human nature just rejects monotonous and isolated grammar that is disconnected from an authentic and interesting language context, just as we reject anything that is unnatural and stiff.
Instructional Tool
Among the most useful tools I have acquired from my teacher’s training are the learning strategies. Middle-school students may still not know how to read and write properly. They need to be taught with reading and writing strategies. In addition, I have learned that the metacognitive process plays an important role in learning. In other words, we have to teach students to be aware how they think when they learn, and understand why their brains work that way they do.
Combining the above thoughts, I have designed two instructional tools: one for reading, and one for writing, both of which are partnership workshops. I picked the partnership work model because I have greatly benefited from it during my course study.
The Reader’s Workshop is designed for a middle-school literacy reading class. It also can be used in a content reading class. There are four stages in the tool:
-- first, prepare and engage students to read the article.
-- Second, give specific directions about how to read – know what information to look for during the process of the reading. For the first reading, let students look for only lower-level comprehension questions.
-- Third, reread. In the second reading, look for the higher-level comprehension questions.
-- Finally, students should raise questions about the reading, and explore the best answers in class. The limitation of the tool is that I do not know whether the steps I listed are complete. I will need to revise the questions over time to better serve my classroom teaching.
I function much better as a reader when I read with clear reading instructions and procedures, and a partner to work with. I believe this reader’s workshop will work very efficiently with my secondary school students’ English art reading, or foreign language (Chinese) reading.
The Writer’s Workshop focuses on brainstorming and gets students to start the writing. The most difficult part for writing is to get started. From what I have observed, students’ writing difficulties often occur because the teacher did not brainstorm the students well enough or did not break the brainstorming questions into smaller units. For example, the teacher should ask, “What information is needed to do this piece of writing?” “What do you know about the topic?” “What do you not know about the topic?” “How can you get the unknown information?”
There are five steps in the Writer’s Workshop:
--brainstorming,
--information collecting,
--writing,
--analyzing,
--revising.
Except for the actual writing, each student will work with their partner to complete all other steps. This way the students will have valuable input a peer, and will have chances to do self-evaluation and self-correction. The limitation is that a content teacher or reading teacher has to accommodate the writing topics based on needs of class.
Combining the above thoughts, I have designed two instructional tools: one for reading, and one for writing, both of which are partnership workshops. I picked the partnership work model because I have greatly benefited from it during my course study.
The Reader’s Workshop is designed for a middle-school literacy reading class. It also can be used in a content reading class. There are four stages in the tool:
-- first, prepare and engage students to read the article.
-- Second, give specific directions about how to read – know what information to look for during the process of the reading. For the first reading, let students look for only lower-level comprehension questions.
-- Third, reread. In the second reading, look for the higher-level comprehension questions.
-- Finally, students should raise questions about the reading, and explore the best answers in class. The limitation of the tool is that I do not know whether the steps I listed are complete. I will need to revise the questions over time to better serve my classroom teaching.
I function much better as a reader when I read with clear reading instructions and procedures, and a partner to work with. I believe this reader’s workshop will work very efficiently with my secondary school students’ English art reading, or foreign language (Chinese) reading.
The Writer’s Workshop focuses on brainstorming and gets students to start the writing. The most difficult part for writing is to get started. From what I have observed, students’ writing difficulties often occur because the teacher did not brainstorm the students well enough or did not break the brainstorming questions into smaller units. For example, the teacher should ask, “What information is needed to do this piece of writing?” “What do you know about the topic?” “What do you not know about the topic?” “How can you get the unknown information?”
There are five steps in the Writer’s Workshop:
--brainstorming,
--information collecting,
--writing,
--analyzing,
--revising.
Except for the actual writing, each student will work with their partner to complete all other steps. This way the students will have valuable input a peer, and will have chances to do self-evaluation and self-correction. The limitation is that a content teacher or reading teacher has to accommodate the writing topics based on needs of class.
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