A Frankenstory

Jennifer and I wrote a story collaboratively. I wrote the first 40 words and then sent it to Jennifer who could only see the last 10 words I had written. We both wrote two parts of the story, building on each other's last words. This was a fun and challenging activity that primary children would enjoy! Our Frankenstory worked out really well. Look at our collaborative story!

There are many advantages to working cooperatively. We know this from research by Vygostky and Piaget but we can also look at more recent theory. Cooperative learning gives:

• Positive Independence- each member of the group needs the other members and each individual has a role that contributes to the overall success of a project. Each student becomes neccessary to the success of the project.

• Face-to-face interaction- In a well-designed cooperative learning project, students will spend much of their time engaged with each other. They will NEED to communicate to complete a project.

• Individual and group accountability- When each person has a role, he or she can be held accountable for completing the assigned task.

• Interpersonal skills and group processing- Students working in collaborative teams will be practising communication skills and learning to make group decisions.

(Johnson, D & Johnson, R. 1999) (cited in Brown, Green and Robinson, 2008)

Whilst working on our Digital Movie, I feel that all members of the group worked cooperatively. We made decisions together and all know what role we had in the group.