Writing in a Circle of Stories

The social nature of writing requires that students learn to write inside a community. When students get involved as authors and gain access to an audience for their texts, writing and writing instruction becomes more effective. Teachers can organize their classrooms and schools to construct a community where students can participate both as writers and as readers. This article describes “Circle of Stories,” a writing project that involves students from different classes and schools in producing a common story. Through collaborative writing and intervention at varied moments of the story production, students in participating classes constitute a writing group, share their opinions and suggestions, and discover the multiple forms and directions that the story can take. Computer‐based technologies provide new possibilities for the exchange of texts and cooperation with students from different schools. At each step of the project, the text finds new, real, and interested readers. The students view themselves as participants in the story production and acquire the feeling of shared authorship.