Writing in a crowded place: Peers collaborating in a third-grade writer's workshop

Abstract

This dissertation presents three case studies of collaborative interaction in a third-grade dual-language classroom during writing instruction over the course of a school year. The study addresses the notion of developing student voice, and how instruction can be seated so that students' narratives will assume central stage in the classroom, creating the opportunity for dialog between students' texts and the texts of the school. This study is situated between a progressive perspective that emphasizes growth through self reflection, organically driven texts, and above all individual meaning, and a post-progressive perspective that challenges educators to provide explicit instruction in the privileged discourses of the dominant ideology. A significant feature of the study is the evolution of the Writing Workshop into a Writer's Workshop, as the focus of activity became the students and their intentions for their texts. The Writer's Workshop was characterized by active and varied peer collaborations as students interacted in a community of writers. The study describes the varied expressions of critical literacy as the case study children interacted with peers to create texts that were shared daily. Critical literacy is defined as the ability to use print as a tool for developing critical consciousness. This was demonstrated in the increasingly sophisticated intentions students established for their texts, as they wrote to shock, entertain influence and reflect. The study underscores the damage to children whose language and literacy development is assessed to be deficient, particularly in the case of bilingual or bidialectic children, and how remedial instruction disrupts not only the child's own incremental progress, but their membership in a supportive learning community.