English Language Arts and Reading.4.1.D

The student is expected to work collaboratively with others to develop a plan of shared responsibilities.
oral language TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, discussion, and thinking -- oral language. The student develops oral language through listening, speaking, and discussion.

Introduce a project in which students will be assigned shared responsibilities to produce a final product. This project can include writing a speech, creating a visual representation of a text, identifying appropriate quotations, or creating a graphic organizer. Ask students to work together to divide up responsibilities. 

Behaviors to observe:

  • The student is actively listening while someone is speaking.
  • The student participates in the group decision-making.
  • The student agrees to the student’s responsibility in the group work.

Notes:

  • Ensure that all the students in the group are actively participating when making decisions about responsibilities.
  • Help students who are struggling to develop a plan by providing them with tools to organize ideas such as an outline or graphic organizer.


Further Explanation 

This SE requires students to work collaboratively with others to determine how work will be shared among group members. Students must understand the importance of individual contributions in a group situation. Students also need to understand what collaboration entails such as active listening and sharing of ideas. Observe as group members discuss the responsibilities and note whether they work collaboratively during the planning of individual responsibilities.

Shared responsibilities are tasks that students complete with the contribution of other students. A plan of shared responsibilities might call on students to each be responsible for an individual task necessary to complete a final product. For example, students working collaboratively on a project might have unique responsibilities, such as writing a speech, creating visual aids, or identifying appropriate quotations. Another approach to a plan of shared responsibilities might have students perform similar activities to create a final product. For example, each student might research and write a separate portion of a report. Students work together to develop a plan that best fits a specific task and allows students to contribute equally to the final product.

Research

1. Carrison, C., & Ernst-Slavis, G.(2005). From silence to a whisper to active participation: Using literature circles with ELL students. Reading Horizons, 46(2). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1137&context=reading_horizons

Summary: The article promotes the use of literature circles to support literacy, especially for English learners. Literature circles allow student to interact through sharing ideas, opinions, and personal responses to literature. Students become active participants and learn to manage their literature circle activities, negotiating the structure of their timelines. The study participants were a fourth-grade class in which 5 of the 24 students had varying levels of language acquisition. The use of literature circles led to decreased anxiety about reading and participation and increased reading accuracy and comprehension.

2. Batson, J. (2014). Postmodernity and oral language learning. Practically Primary, 19(1), 39+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A361713108/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=0dc50066

Summary: The article argues for the increasing need for schools to support conversational skills in the digital age and provides ways to build opportunities for social communication in the classroom.

3. Peterson, S. S., & Rajendram, S. (2019). Teacher-child and peer talk in collaborative writing and writing-mediated play: Primary classrooms in Northern Canada. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 42(1), 28+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A571514310/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=7dbe79ee

Summary: This research examines teacher-child and peer interactions during collaborative writing and writing-mediated play in 10 northern Canadian primary classrooms. In the collaborative writing contexts involving teacher-assigned texts, children more frequently talked about the letters and sounds of words, or the details of drawings in their texts. In both contexts, children used language for affiliative purposes, as the demands of the collaborative settings required that they find ways to get along with each other.