How Publishing a Classbook Promotes Teamwork in the Classroom
One of the many rewarding aspects of being a teacher is guiding your students to make meaningful connections—with their classwork, with you, and most of all, with each other. Promoting teamwork in the classroom builds an important sense of community and support among your students that encourages self-expression and creativity. It creates a safe space in which to share ideas, experiment and broaden horizons. Collaboration builds social skills as well as critical thinking skills, and, for many students, it makes learning more enjoyable.
But not all assignments lend themselves easily to collaborative efforts, and not all group projects are created equal. Publishing a classbook together, as a class, is, perhaps, the ideal collaborative project as it can bring students together in ways few other class projects can.
How Does Publishing Promote Teamwork?
There’s collaborative potential built into each and every step of a publishing project, from choosing a topic all the way through celebrating their published books! How much teamwork is involved in the process is entirely up to you and your class. You may choose to start students off brainstorming together and then work individually on the ideas they conjured up, reconvening to review as a group before publishing. Or, you can have them work side-by-side through each phase of the publishing process, learning and growing together with each step. No matter the method you choose, at the end of the day, their published book will be something they’ll be proud to have shared—with each other and with the rest of the world.
Step #1: Collaborative Brainstorming
Brainstorming is often the most playful part of the writing process—perhaps doubly so when multiple brains are involved. Whether in groups or as a class, discussing potential themes and topics for a classbook project can be one of the year’s most engaging classroom activities. Building on one another’s suggestions can help individuals generate more (and more creative) ideas than any one person might be able to do on their own. It’s also a lesson in active listening, as students must learn to respect each other’s contributions to the discussion even when they don’t see eye to eye on the subject at hand.
Brainstorming worksheets are handy for tracking different groups’ ideas or for keeping a class discussion on topic.
These brainstorming strategies can help you and your students make the most of your next session.
If you and your students get stuck in a creative rut, these topic generation tips can help you break free!
Step #2: Synergetic Storytelling
Drafting is usually the solo step of any collaborative writing project, but it doesn’t have to be! Writing together—whether by taking turns contributing sentences or paragraphs or by utilizing a collaborative technique like tapestry poetry—turns drafting into a word game which everyone can win simply by participating. Students learn how to compromise and incorporate both their own ideas and those of others into a single coherent composition—and, in so doing, witness how others’ talents and perspectives can complement their own to make something truly new and original.
Writing worksheets are especially helpful for younger students still learning basic writing structure.
Check out some examples of collaborative writing activities if you need a little inspiration for this step of the process.
Collaborative storytelling is just one way in which you can make the writing (and publishing!) process more fun for your students.
Step #3: Practicing Peer Review
While it’s important to teach students self-editing skills as well, nothing beats a fresh set of eyes and an alternate perspective when it comes to the editing stage of the writing process. Peer review activities highlight the value of seeking help and advice from others and offers an excellent opportunity for them to aid their fellow classmates in turn. They give students a chance to practice reviewing their own work with a fair but critical eye as well as giving others critical, but compassionate, feedback. And, of course, it’s the ideal way to demonstrate how important it is to always double-check—and sometimes triple-check!—one’s work.
Step #4: Celebrating Together
Hosting a special event to commemorate publishing day helps build camaraderie and a sense of community by allowing your students to enjoy themselves together and bond over a shared achievement. A party can be a fantastic opportunity to celebrate creatively with a fun theme, student-created decorations and more. However, if you feel you’re too short on time to plan or host a full party, a low-key box opening “ceremony” and reading session can still be a great way to build connections and acknowledge their hard work.
Publishing and Teamwork in the Classroom
A classroom isn’t simply a place for teachers to lecture and students to learn. It should be a welcoming environment that promotes experimentation, self-expression and personal growth. Likewise, a class isn’t just a collective term for a group of individual students. It’s a community of peers who can support, inspire and motivate one another in ways teachers simply can’t replicate—but can facilitate.
A classbook publishing project helps promote teamwork in the classroom by providing unique opportunities for collaborative creativity every step of the way. Even long after the project itself is complete, the book they published together becomes a memento of time spent in good company, and a reminder of just how much they can accomplish when they work together to achieve a common goal.
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We provide teachers and schools with a FREE hands-on writing activity that motivates students to write and inspires students to learn by turning their stories into professionally bound books.
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