The Missouri Reader Vol. 40, Issue 3 | Page 9

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Shared Writing: My Methods and Successes

Moreover, reading aloud to teenagers can stimulate their imagination and emotions, enrich their vocabulary and understanding of sophisticated language patterns, make difficult text understandable, and encourage a lifelong enjoyment of reading (Anderson, 2007)

Another great advantage to shared writing is the opportunity to revise and edit writing together as a class. If I am the one who is dictating sentences onto the chart paper, I always make mistakes, just like the kids would. The purpose is for us to be able to go back later and edit our writing. It is not feasible to think the students would write a perfect paper the first time, so we should mirror that writing in our examples. For most students, it really makes the connections. Seeing their own thoughts as part of our story combined with the class editing really makes the difference for many of the students. I would recommend shared writing to any educator to use in their classroom.

Joyce Burns is a 2nd grade teacher at a Title 1 elementary school in Springfield. She has been teaching for three years and is currently an elementary education graduate student obtaining a literacy certificate at Missouri State University in Springfield.