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Thank You for Sharing: Developing Students' Social Skills to Improve Peer Writing Conferences.
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Franklin, Keri |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | After listening to the cooperative learning trainer discuss the impor tance of developing social skills in the classroom, I began to realize why peer-conferencing sessions in the required En glish II and English IV classes were not going as I had hoped. I needed to help students identify ap propriate behaviors used in everyday social skills and used in effective peer conferences. By discussing peer conferencing in terms of social skills, I would not only help students improve discussions about writing but also teach them how to collaborate with others. Simply, effective social skills are essential if students are expected to discuss writing. I knew that in an urban school of 1,800, the students in my class did not know a soul, and they would rarely intro duce themselves to a person they did not know. If they could not initiate a conversation with someone they did not know, how could I expect them to share and comment on each other's writing? I wanted student conferences to look like a conversation. As a graduate student in a writing center, I began tutoring sessions by introducing myself to the person and getting to know him or her. For five or ten minutes we talked without dis cussing the paper. That brief time was essential in building rapport and trust. These same warm-up conversations occur when I meet with a peer. In any kind of social inter action with a peer, we exchange pleasantries and share updates on family events and upcoming activi ties. After this chat, we usually get down to busi ness. As teachers, the time we get to talk with peers, our friends, is an important, almost sacred, time be cause there is never enough of it. Why not allow students the opportunity to chat with friends?the same courtesy I appreciated in meetings with peers? Why did I fight "off-task" talk? Through talk, stu dents can improve their conversational skills, which in turn would help their peer-conferencing skills. Many students go to school purely for socialization. Incorporating socialization helped students see that I valued all types of talk. If student writing confer ences are conversations between people with mutual respect, writing can grow. Or, at least, that is the assumption I worked from. Giving students oppor tunities to talk about their writing ideas would en able them to internalize their thoughts and ideas. I wanted them to talk about writing, to collaborate to provide feedback that moved beyond a focus on sen tence-level errors. |
| Starting Page | 79 |
| Ending Page | 84 |
| Page Count | 6 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 99 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/14014/thank_you_for_sharing_franklin.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
