Shared Writing

The students are working on their last large writing project of the year: an expository essay on an endangered animal.  They have been hard at work doing research for their paper, and some of us have even finished.  As we all start to get closer to the next step, it means that we'll begin drafting.  To start our papers, we plan on writing an introductory paragraph.  This can often be a hard, wordy task and one which I like to model first for the students (do an example for / with them first).  Today we did just that and then the students participated in shared writing with a partner or small group to write an introductory paragraph together to get our papers started.  It was GREAT to see the collaboration between the students.