Designate group roles with assigned tasks and objectives. Your group should include a leader who keeps track of the group's understanding of lessons, a secretary who records group discussions and responses, a reporter who represents the group in presentations, a monitor to keep time and deadlines and a manager who assists the group leader and fills other important roles during absences.
Give each member of the group a particular topic of the essay to research. Students are responsible for educating group members about their assigned topic, becoming experts and teachers in their subject area. Each student should write a portion of the essay specific to their area of expertise.
Strengthen your group and improve the project outcome by utilizing group processing strategies. Such strategies should encourage students to assess each member's contribution to the team, finding and eliminating problems that threaten the progress of the group essay. Your group should then make decisions about the best approach to problem solving while still emphasizing that each group member has a unique and important contribution to the discussion.
Grade your group's essay by dividing each member's contribution into sections, allowing peers to give feedback to improve the quality of the essay before submitting it for final grading.