Weaving cooperative learning groups and written responses to literature together in a high school SDAIE language arts classroom

Research Question. In what ways do 9 th grade SDAIE students' abilities to create written responses to literature change over time when they give and receive written and oral feedback in cooperative learning groups designed to produce academic writing?;Grade Level. 9th grade;Research Activities. This research focuses on promoting high-level thinking and engagement in a SDAIE classroom. I wanted to build an interactive classroom through the use of small writing workshop groups that would allow students to use literature to write literary analysis papers. I looked at the involvement of peer interaction within these groups to see what impact they would have on student writing of second drafts of their analysis papers. Context. The inquiry took place in a SDAIE 9 language Arts classroom, which met daily for one hour. Three focal students were chosen based on scores from the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) and the California Standards Test (CST), a beginning of the year writing assessment, observations, and interviews I had with individual students. The three focal students represented a range of academic abilities based on the above criteria, and also spoke three different native languages, Spanish, Punjabi, and Tagalog. Methods and Data. This inquiry lasted 25 days and included the use of teacher scaffolded lessons on writing literary responses to literature, an introduction to literary analysis vocabulary, group discussions and peer feedback, and independent student writing. Data was collected in the form of pre-intervention writing samples, interviews at the beginning and the end of the inquiry, student writing of six analysis papers, observations, and audio recordings. Results. Results showed that cooperative learning groups yield many positive returns. The groups provided an audience for their work, gave them more self-confidence in being able to share their thoughts and to ask questions, and held them responsible for their own learning. Students became holders of knowledge and information. Students used language much more often than was previously observed, which in turn helped to stimulate their intellectual growth.;Curriculum Areas. English Language Arts, Writing, English Language Development.;Instructional Approaches. Teacher modeling, group discussions, peer feedback, literary analysis vocabulary scaffolding, anchor papers.