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From: cw@vaxwaller.UUCP (Carl Weidling)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Learning to communicate
Message-ID: <163@vaxwaller.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Aug-84 12:35:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: vaxwalle.163
Posted: Thu Aug 30 12:35:09 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Sep-84 03:09:35 EDT
Organization: Varian, Walnut Creek, CA
Lines: 38


	I have an idea for a way to teach kids to write and think
that I would like to propose.
	Divide a class into two groups and have each group experience
something that it must write about.  The experience could be one of a
wide variety of things, see a program, be given a demonstration, take
a field trip, etc, but the two halves of the class do different things.
Then each member writes up a description which is read by a counter-
part in the other half of the class.  And the counterpart reads and
critiques what was written.   This would give everybody a chance to
write and read and see the problems of communication on both sides.
It might also take some of the load off of the teacher!
	I'm sure you net readers are sick of suggestions involving
computers, but the kids could enter their descriptions at terminals
and read and correct at terminals.  This could preserve anonymity,
which might be a good thing, and preserve eyesight if some of the
kids have handwriting as bad as mine, and also might provide useful
editing features for indicating where corrections could be made,
running differences on different drafts etc.
	Anybody know of any schools using something like this?
	Anybody have any remarks on how good or bad the idea is?
or how it could be improved?
	This idea evolved from having read an article in Scientific
American a long time ago about someone doing research in how children
learn to use language.  The researcher had the kids facing each other,
if I remember correctly, one had a picture and tried to describe it
to the other.  This researcher was measuring the ability, but it
occurred to me something like that could be use to develope the
ability.  Recently a colleague mentioned that she had learned to
write at a Catholic High School because the teachers didn't mind
taking the time to grade essay tests, whereas underpaid normal
teachers did mind spending a lot of their own time grading and
so tended to use multiple choice tests.  Her remark prompted this
posting.

			Regards,
			Carl Weidling