Primary Pad, A Collaborative Writing Tool for Round Robin Writing

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. Accordingly in this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will share how the teacher/mentor can engage his or class students/mentees in collaborative writing by using the cooperative procedure Round Robin Writing on the Primary Pad platform.

Here is a tutorial on using Primary Pad: http://vimeo.com/8454210

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers as well.

Note: Although this lesson plan idea is designed for the Judaic Studies classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. For example, the Primary Pad can be used to co-create a lesson plan, a unit, a professional development or staff development plan, or a curriculum project.It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators.

Note: We will use the word teacher and student in this lesson plan idea. For purposes of staff development training replace the word (a) teacher with mentor teacher, staff developer, teacher trainer or college professor, (b) and student with mentee, client, pre-service or in-service teacher, undergraduate or graduate student.

What is Round Robin Writing?

Round Robin writing involves a small group of students (i.e. from two to four students) composing a story in sequential order (i.e. either clockwise or counter-clockwise) in a round robin fashion. Let’s simulate a round robin writing scenario.

Assumption: The teacher places students into triads.

In this scenario the triad contains student #1, student #2, and student #3.

The teacher or student #1 begins the story. In this case, the teacher begins the story and writes this sentence on the interactive white board using the Primary Pad web tool: “It was not that long ago that... “

Then student #1 continues the story and, for example, writes the following sentences using the Primary Pad collaborative tool : “ the most amazing thing happened to me on the way to (Hebrew, day) school today. I found this book on a park bench and noticed that the cover contained Hebrew letters. I opened the book to see if there was any writing inside, and lo and behold there was a note that said...”

Then student # 3 continues the story and writes his or her sentences using the Primary Pad for collaborating writing.

When all the triads complete their story, they share them with their classmates or peers.

On the next post we will describe how students/mentees can brainstorm ideas online by using the web tool Primary Pad.