Learning to share jobs + learning to share ideas + learning to work together = COLLABORATION!!

Collaboration is key to success in so many areas of employment in our current workplace, and also will be key in workplaces of the future. Building skills of collaboration in our students is essential, and can be made fun and easy by using inquiries and challenges in your classroom. We have found the following tools to be very helpful when building collaboration skills in our students:

• Kagan Cooperative Learning - this extensive model of cooperative learning includes class building and team building activities that engage students and teach them the power of working together. Check out the website for strategies, lessons, and more - https://www.kaganonline.com/
• Jigsaw model of team projects - If you are unfamiliar with the jigsaw model of team projects, here is a very basic explanation. In a jigsaw project, the class is broken up into groups (groups can be chosen by the students). Each group is responsible to complete a learning task. In order to reach that learning goal, there are subgroups that each group must send one of their members to, in order for that member to become an 'expert' in. The member goes to the subgroup, learns and records important information, and reports back to the main group what he/she has learned. The groups then collect all of the information from each subgroup and completes the learning task together. This encourages the group to become interdependent on each member to complete his/her share of the work and contribute to the overall learning task. An example is a grade 6 learning task to complete a food web of a particular ecosystem. The group sends members to the following subgroups: producers, first order consumers, second order consumer, top consumer(s), decomposers, scavengers. Students in each subgroup would compile information about their animals or plants for their ecosystems, and then report back to their group to build a food web together. For more information on the jigsaw model, there are many websites and videos; I have included the following link as just one of many: www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/jigsaw
• Assigning roles: When planning construction projects for students, we use roles to encourage students to share the work load, and also get a chance to try each role to see which roles are their strengths and weak areas. For building projects, pairs are ideal, but if supplies and tools are limited, groups of 3 or 4 will work too. Students choose or rotate to a different role each building session over 4 sessions so they can try each job. For example, in construction projects such as robotic building or group building projects such as tower building, we included 4 roles such as:
  • 'Engineer': he/she is the project manager and plans the construction, enters the code (if robotics are used).
  • 'Technician': he/she handles the parts and adds them to the build under the supervision of the Engineer.
  • 'Supervisor': helps the technician with the build.
  • 'Warehouse keeper': is in charge of organizing and locating build materials, cleaning the work site, and assisting the engineer with planning/selecting materials from the warehouse.

Collaboration Self and Team Self-Assessment:

• It is important for students to self-reflect on their collaboration skills. By completing a reflection exit card at the end of a project, students can reflect critically on their collaboration skills, and identify which skills they need to work on during their next project. This can be done digitally on a platform like 'google forms', or a checklist, such as the example I have uploaded here.