Promoting Collaboration
Nyree Wilson - Learning Specialist
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A collaborative classroom often needs to establish a positive learning community first, where students feel able to share their ideas and thinking and work with their peers.
A collaborative classroom often needs to establish a positive learning community first, where students feel able to share their ideas and thinking and work with their peers.
It can be helpful to introduce some low stakes social learning activities that encourage students to mingle and get to know each other. Start your lesson with a game, or some casual and informal questions that help you create a segue into the focus or 'hook' of the lesson. Explore an example of a 'Handshake Protocol' lesson as a social learning activity that encourages students to mingle and practice speaking to each other in a structured way. It also helps to make sure we are using a range of grouping strategies to help students mingle and connect with each other in a variety of ways.
Creating classroom routines that use a variety of grouping strategies helps build a climate of collaboration and promotes connectedness when students understand that specific grouping strategies are being used for a specific purpose - when we do this, we are using dynamic groupings.
Dynamic Groupings are tools we use to plan for how we teach skills and knowledge.
Grouping strategies become dynamic when we have a clear purpose for using them.
Responding to evidenced needs using a specific grouping strategy provides dynamic and differentiated ways of engaging with learning.
Learning how to participate in a jigsaw
Learning how to participate in a jigsaw
Jigsaw activities are a powerful instructional routine that promotes equitable learning and peer-to-peer connections. Students need to be introduced to the strategy in low stakes ways that help them understand the process and purpose. This resource is designed to help staff and students understand the what and how of running a jigsaw.
Why Jigsaws work:
Shared responsibility for exploring and developing knowledge
Can differentiate text types and length.
Students develop knowledge together that empowers them to contribute shared thinking.
Invites students to undertake exploratory low stakes thinking.
Each student is responsible for contributing to collective knowledge.
Students learn to negotiate different perspectives and points of view.
TIP! When you hand out the stimulus or reading material in step one, give students a piece of coloured paper for that reading. Then in their next group explain that they need to have at least one person of each coloured paper in thier group.
Effective_Questioning&Talk.pdfQuestioning to create collaborative discussion
Questioning to create collaborative discussion
This resource from Greg Gast helps us understand the different uses of questioning, the strategies we can use and the importance of wait time.
Questioning Routines
Provide students with a short clip, informative text, image, cartoon, etc. and use one or more of the following questioning routines to explore it:
What does this tell us? How do we know? Why is it important?
What do you notice? What do you wonder? What do you want to know more about?
What is it? Who made it? When did they make it? Why did they make it?
What is the main message? What could we remove, change or add to make the message or information clearer?
What are the main ideas in this text? Who would want to know about this? Why would they want to know about it?
The difference between cooperation and collaboration
The difference between cooperation and collaboration
7 keys to creative collaboration
7 keys to creative collaboration
Strategies for collaborating with teams & colleagues
Strategies for collaborating with teams & colleagues
Teachers as Learning Designers
Teachers as Learning Designers
How to Collaborate
How to Collaborate
Want to create a space in your school for teachers to play, design, and collaborate?
1. Cultivate trust: Be open and honest. Visit each other’s classrooms. Observe the dynamics of teacher to students, student to student, and teacher to teacher.
2. Don’t be married to ideas: Follow the four Fs: fail fast, fail frequently. When working together, encourage all collaborators to generate as many ideas as possible early on. This creates a culture of iteration. Really push each other to think about different ways that a learning goal can be executed.
3. Apply the KISS principle: KISS stands for “Keep it simple, stupid.” No matter what you’re creating together (a game, project, or lesson plan), the more complex the rules or the structure, the more questions students will have, and the less time they will be engaged in the actual learning.
4. Play-test often: It’s never too early to put your game or project in front of someone else for feedback. Even a very rough idea can be play-tested. You never know how something will work until you try it.
5. Know when to scale back: Keep the product of your collaboration focused. Realize when the game or lesson is attempting to do too much.
6. Involve students from the beginning: Students are your target audience. They should be involved in every step of the design process, because they have invaluable feedback to give.
7. Use what’s around you: You know what schools have a ton of? Paper. And markers. And math manipulatives. As you think about possible game or lesson components, keep in mind what materials are easily accessible. Bringing too much in from the outside can be a hassle and is often unnecessary.
8. Build on strengths and interests: Actively try to discover what all collaborators like and what they’re good at. Be attuned to moments of excitement and disengagement. Use each other’s passions to help sculpt the game or project.
9. Have fun! If you're into what you're doing, when you walk into the classroom to get students involved they'll sense your fun and enthusiasm!
Here is one example of a tool you can use to help you collaboratively design a series of lessons to support a learning sequence.
Site developed and maintained by Nyree Wilson 2021
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