Authentic Shared Revising & Editing

GLAD Strategy: Cooperative Strip Paragraph
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What is the cooperative strip paragraph?
The Cooperative Strip Paragraph is by far one of my favorite GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) strategies because it promotes cooperative learning, reading and writing in all content areas. BAM!
I first learned about it several years ago when I went through GLAD training. I used to be a certified GLAD trainer for my district (but we let our certification expire). The great thing is that even if your certification expires, the knowledge you've gained never does!  
Anyhow, I instantly fell in love with Cooperative Strip Paragraphs after using them with my own students. What I love most about CSP is that it allows my students to process their learning while they write in cooperative groups, practice reading at their own readability level, and go through the steps of revising and editing in an authentic way using a shared piece of work. And the fact that CSP can be used in any content area K-12 is an additional BONUS!

CSP incorporates shared reading and shared writing. And it benefits my students who are struggling readers as well as my ELLs because they have multiple opportunities to read, read, read the text that we write together.

Here’s how it works:
Let’s say for example that we’ve been learning about the solar system (but it can be just about any topic or even a book)...

• I ask the students to work in collaborative groups to come up with one sentence together about the topic. Group one might write about Mars and group 2 might write about Earth...so on. 
  • Teacher: “Scientists, we’ve been learning about the solar system. Put your heads together and write a sentence about the planet that interests you most. Remember, work together to come up with your sentence. Everyone must agree.”
• Students put their heads together and discuss until they come up with one sentence together. Each group uses a different colored marker to write their sentence on a sentence strip. Once sentences are ready, a student from each group places them on the pocket chart in the front of the class. Don’t worry about the order of the sentences. That will be part of the revising process later.
• After all the sentences are up, the class will come together in front of the pocket chart and read the sentences chorally. The teacher will come up with a topic sentence and write it in black on a sentence strip. For this example it may be something like: The solar system has many planets.

Spotlight

• We begin by highlighting in yellow what we like about our writing. What have we done well? Which words sound scientific and academic? By putting a spotlight on what we’ve done well, we boost the confidence of our young writers.

Revising

• Before we revise, we chorally reread our piece of writing. Now let’s look at possible revisions. Many districts already some type of revising and editing checklist. You can use the one that your district supports or the one included here. Using a kid-friendly revising and editing checklist will help ELLs move through this critical process.
• First we look at the clarity of our writing. Does our writing make sense or do we need to make any changes to make our piece more clear for the reader? We start from the beginning and work our way down thinking about whether or not we need to add in words or take words out to make our writing more clear. We look at the ORDER and structure of our piece and we begin to rearrange our sentence strips to make more sense. 
• During the Revising and Editing process the teacher makes edits in BLACK marker and if needed tears sentence trips to add words in or take words out with the permission of the class (shared writing, revising and editing). 
• After revising together, the class will use an Editing Check list to edit the piece together. During each step of the process, the class will practice chorally reading the piece. (SOO much reading)! 
• And finally the teacher will guide students in crafting a conclusion sentence together. 
• And once again, REREAD it!

After the piece is complete, the teacher will type it up and this piece can become a fluency practice for readers. 
Also the teacher can recreate the piece on new sentence strips matching the colors. Then this can be used as a small group reading activity. The teacher will rearrange the strips and allow the group to rebuild it. And guess what!? They reread it again. All this reading practice is amazing for your ELLs and struggling readers. The gains they make are fabulous!
After they have completed the task, the teacher can cut the sentence strips into smaller chunks and do some more rearranging and students can play again and reread! This can continue until the strips are cut down to a word. 

 Relationship to State Testing
Does your state have a standardized writing test? We do...and our ELLs usually don't do well on the revising and editing portion. But teaching revising and editing in isolation or with texts that aren't their own isn't relevant to students. They can't connect with the learning and carry it forward into application. The built in component of authentically revising and editing a piece of shared writing is arguably the most powerful part of CSP.  Rather than having students practice using reading passages they are unfamiliar with and answer multiple choice questions, CSP relies on a more organic approach to practicing revising and editing. 
State testing has its value, but like many of you, I do not believe in teaching to a test. Tests change every year. Rather I'm a supporter in relying on the state curriculum standards. If we use those to guide our instruction, and we know our students well, then we should be able to help them do well on any assessment put in front of them. ​

Let me know if you've used Cooperative Strip Paragraph before or if you plan on using it. Please share in the comments below. I would love to hear your experiences!