As a teacher new to a school, would you seek another teacher for purposes of collaboration?  How might you go about this?

How you could use routine collaboration with other school personnel to make this work.

What do you do to contribute to a positive partnership with your Mentor Teacher? Name TWO ways (e.g. something you do, something you say).

How does collaboration among teachers impact school culture?Choose only ONE best answer.AIt reduces the need for professional developmentBIt limits the exchange of ideasCIt fosters a supportive and inclusive environmentDIt complicates classroom management

What would you like your Mentor Teacher to do more of, to support your growth as a young person?

The promptingand help of others may allow them to do this. Third, where groups98 • Helping Learners Writecontain learners of differing proficiency, there is the opportunity for morepersonalised teaching to occur with one learner working with anotherwho needs help.Many experience tasks and guided tasks can be done in a group, thusincreasing the help that learners are given with the tasks.Most shared tasks have the advantages of requiring little preparation bythe teacher, reducing the teacher’s supervision and marking load, andencouraging the learners to see each other as a learning resource.When doing a reproduction exercise the learners read or listen to astory and then they retell it without looking at the original. This type ofcomposition is easier if the learners are allowed to read or listen to thestory several times, before they write it. The teacher can tell the learners totry to write the story so that it is very similar to the original, or to add extradetails and make changes if they wish. The same technique can be usedwith spoken instead of written input. The teacher reads a story to the class.After they have listened to the story, they must write it from their memory.If the teacher wants to give the learners a lot of help, the teacher reads thestory several times, but not so many times that the learners can copy itexactly. As the learners cannot remember all the words of the story, theyhave to make up parts of it themselves. This gives them practice in com-position. This exercise is sometimes called a dicto-comp (Ilson, 1962;Riley, 1972; Nation, 1991), because it is half-way between dictation andcomposition. Marking is easy.The exercise can be made more difficult to suit the abilities of thelearners. Here are three different ways of doing this, the second way ismore difficult then the first, and the third is more difficult than the second.1. The teacher reads a short passage several times.2. The teacher reads a long passage once or twice. The learners can takenotes while the passage is being read.3. The learners listen to the passage once. When they write they musttry to copy the style of the original (Mitchell, 1953).This activity is called a dicto-gloss (Wajnryb, 1988 and 1989) if it is done asgroup work and if the learners take notes during two listening sessions.To make a blackboard composition the whole class works together. Theteacher or the learners suggest a subject and a rough plan for the com-position. Members of the class raise their hands and suggest a sentenceto put in the composition. If the sentence is correct it is written on theblackboard. If it is not correct, the class and the teacher correct it and thenit is written on the board. In this way the composition is built up from thelearners’ suggestions and the learners’ and the teacher’s corrections. Whenthe whole composition is finished, the learners read it and then it is rubbedHelping Learners Write • 99off the blackboard. The learners do not copy it in their books before this.Then the learners must rewrite it from memory. This last part can be doneas homework (Radford, 1969). The teacher has only to prepare a subject.Marking is easy as the learners usually make very few mistakes whenrewriting.The learners are divided into groups for group-class composition. Theteacher gives the subject of the composition and then the learners in theirgroups discuss and make a list of the main ideas that they will write about.Then the teacher brings the class together and, following the learners’suggestions, makes a list of the main ideas on the blackboard. After this isdiscussed, the learners return to their groups and write a composition asa group. When the composition is finished each member of the groupmakes a copy of the composition. Only one copy is handed to the teacherfor marking. The learners correct their copies by looking at the markedcopy when the teacher gives it back to them. It is useful if they discuss theteacher’s corrections in their groups.In group composition, the learners are divided into groups or pairs.Each group writes one composition. Each learner suggests sentences andcorrects the sentences suggested by the other learners. When the com-position is finished, each learner makes a copy but only one compositionfrom each group is handed to the teacher to be marked. When the com-position has been marked, the learners correct their own copy from themarked one. The teacher just has to suggest a subject. Marking is usuallyeasy because the learners correct most of the mistakes themselves beforethe composition is handed to the teacher. The teacher marks only onecomposition for each group.When writing with a secretary, the learners work in pairs to do a pieceof writing. One member of the pair has primary responsibility for thecontent and the other has to produce the written form