Introduction
This material provides an opportunity to look closely, and from different perspectives, at what happened when pupils in pairs engaged in a writing activity at the computer.
The Questions
How is writing to screen collaboratively different from writing individually with pen and paper?
What difference is the computer making to the process?
We present in different ways the process and outcomes of a writing activity that extended over six weekly lessons in the Computer Suite.
Four short video extracts are included. They feature two pupils and are taken from the second lesson.
Context
This unit of work was undertaken by a Year 5 Class in the Summer Term.
Pam Kelly, their teacher, is an experienced teacher and a member of the school’s Senior Management Team. She is also the Literacy Co-ordinator. Pam uses a computer at home and said she felt reasonably confident and relaxed with the technology in that context; but she was not comfortable in the Computer Suite where she felt she was not equipped to cope with the frequent technical problems that occurred.
Before joining the InterActive English Subject team, Pam routinely took her class into the Computer Suite for one timetabled lesson each week. These sessions consisted typically of one-off ICT-curriculum related activities.
For her first English Subject Design Initiative Pam decided to devote six sessions in the suite to using the word processing program in connection with work in Literacy on exploring older literature and writing. We were interested in the effect that using this commonly available software would have on what and how the pupils wrote. Their experience of using the computer for writing was previously limited to the presentation/publishing of final drafts for display. They did this using the single classroom computer. In school, the pupils had never composed straight onto the screen.
Another focus of interest was writing collaboratively. The normal practice in the class was for pupils to write individually in exercise books. There was no tradition of writing collaboratively.
To help us understand more about the processes of writing on computer and about how the pairs were collaborating we collected a range of data:
- video data on three pairs of pupils
- printouts of what all pairs had written after every session
- interviews with the target pairs after the final session, using the week by week printouts as stimulus to recall of composing and collaborating
- interview with the teacher
Planning the work
The writing formed part of a unit of work on “exploring the challenge and appeal of older literature”.
The specific writing objectives were:
- to write in the style of an author
- to write from another character’s point of view.
After looking at extracts from ‘Wind in the Willows” and “David Copperfield” in two Literacy lessons, the class together read Chapter 1 of Alice in Wonderland and talked about the narrative point of view and the style. They also watched an excerpt from a film adaptation.
The task.
In pairs EITHER write the next chapter in the style of Lewis Carroll, OR re-write the first chapter from the point of view of the White Rabbit.
The time allocation across six weekly lessons in the Computer Suite reflected the traditional model of the writing process: five sessions were for drafting, the final session would be devoted to copy editing and final presentation including selection of font, inclusion of pictures or other illustration.
Because the collaboration was to extend over six lessons Pam chose the pairs carefully.
“I made sure that nobody was going to be with anybody that they’d want to kill after twenty minutes.”
Pam’s thoughts at the start
“Every class I’ve done it with have absolutely loved Alice in Wonderland, although most of them have never read it before – though they have seen films and cartoons. That’s why I decided to stick with it because they’re all so intrigued by how funny it is…and the whole sort of surreal aspect of it really appealed to them.
“I thought it would enable them to write more efficiently…working in twos. …discuss and work out what words they were going to use…use of language…looking for new ways to express things, perhaps discussing the verbs they were using.
I thought writing on the screen would make it easier for them. I thought as they typed things in they would sort of say ‘Oh no actually that doesn’t sound very good’ or ‘We’ve used that word too often’.”
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