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This will be the first station for Group #2 (15 minutes)
This will be the first station for Group #2 (15 minutes)
Station Objective: I can examine the text and then share my reasoning about how to deepen collaboration through a structured academic discourse.
Station Objective: I can examine the text and then share my reasoning about how to deepen collaboration through a structured academic discourse.
Read the Excerpts and then engage in the Collaboration Structure below with your table
Read the Excerpts and then engage in the Collaboration Structure below with your table
Note: Please get with your table group based on The Letter on your name tag. Either Table A or B.
Collaboration Station.webm
Excerpts from: 5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration By Mary Burns
Excerpts from: 5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration By Mary Burns
Most of us who teach believe in the power of collaboration and frequently engage our students in collaborative activities. But how many times have we put students in groups only to watch them interact with their laptops instead of each other? Or pursue their own individual goals instead of consult with one another? Or complain about a lazy teammate?
Promoting real collaboration is hard to do well—and it doesn’t just happen on its own. If we want real collaboration, we need to intentionally design it as part of our learning activity. These are five strategies to encourage effective collaboration.
CREATE LEARNING ACTIVITIES THAT ARE COMPLEX
CREATE LEARNING ACTIVITIES THAT ARE COMPLEX
Students need a reason to collaborate. If the assignment is too simple, they can more easily do it alone. At most, they may check in with each other or interact in superficial ways. The real reason to collaborate is because the task is complex—it is too difficult and has too many pieces to complete alone.
Complex activities are challenging, engaging, stimulating, and multilayered. Complex activities require “positive interdependence” (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008), a situation in which attaining the goal, completing the task, being successful, and getting a good grade require that the team work together and share knowledge.
One way to do this is through rigorous projects that require students to identify a problem (for example, balancing population growth in their city with protection of existing green spaces) and agree—through research, discussion, debate, and time to develop their ideas—on a solution which they must then propose together.
FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING AND STRETCHING EXPERTISE
FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING AND STRETCHING EXPERTISE
The challenge of designing good collaborative activities is ensuring that all students, even those who struggle, play an important role. Collaboration should not just strengthen students’ existing skills but ensure that their interactions stretch existing knowledge and expand one another’s expertise. If, for example, a student is much stronger in one skill than her peers in her group, she can teach others and her grade can be contingent upon how much her peers learn.
In collaborative activities, we want to ensure that students don’t just occupy the same physical space but that they share an intellectual space—that they learn more, do more, and experience more together than they would alone. As teachers, we can promote real collaboration by shifting our role from instructor to coach—promoting team autonomy, checking in on students and providing instant feedback, and helping them increasingly learn to work together productively to attain a common goal.
Early Finishers: Start on your second second highlighted sentences and repeat the process
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