Collaborative Wriitng and Debating

Lesson Plan Title: Classroom Collaborative Writing and Publishing
Topic: Descriptive Narrative
CCLS: Editing Identify punctuation, spelling, and grammar and usage errors in the draft.
Revising Evaluate the draft for use of ideas, content, organization, word choice, and sentence fluency
. Use a variety of sentence structures.
Use resources to include more powerful vocabulary.

Have students choose topics that will ignite discussion and for whihc they feel some passion. Possible topics include: required school uniforms, getting paid for good grades, school homework policies on weekends, required subjects and student choice, food choices for lunch, school government policies.

Teaching Points: Students will work together, in groups, 1. to utilize the writing process through technology 2. to publish their final draft on class website and 3. to debate the srguments pro and con for their choice of topic

Materials: Laptop Computers for student use: Class website
Procedures:
1. Students choose their topics and work within groups
2. Give students the assignment and discuss the criteria.
3. Review and discuss requirements of a great argument
4. Assign each member of the group specific tasks but remind students that every member is responsible for the whole product.
5. Allow class time to begin and continue the assignment.
6. Provide time for peer editing and revisions.
7. Publish final pieces on class website
8. Each group will then read and respond to each other group’s published work.
Closure: Students will write a self-reflection on the computer site and will also share their thoughts about the assignment. They will also critique the quality of their own group’s published piece. In class discussion, students will reflect and share how this assignment helped them to grow as a writer and will discuss what areas still need to be improved. Discussion will also focus on the debate on their topics.



Cross-Curriculum Ideas
After assigning a content area topic, groups would be responsible for reading, analyzing, summarizing and presenting their portion of the text to the class. This is called jigsawing. Cross curricula topics would include: treatment of girls in education in forein countries, medicinal selling of marijuana, etc.