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Tools & Strategies to Support Students Using Solo Taxonomy

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Tools & Strategies to Support Students Using Solo Taxonomy

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Differentiated Thinking Tools and Strategies (Public)

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In this article you will find a framework for co-constructing success criteria with grade 4 students as part of assessment planning.
I strongly believe that assessment is something that should be done 'with students', not 'to students'. And as part of that belief I often feel uncomfortable when teachers sit together behind closed doors and decide what students ought to learn and how best students can show their learning - specifically when it comes to designing success criteria for an assessment tool. How can we expect students to fully engage in learning and demonstration of learning process when they are kept out of the decision-making process about what should be learned in the first place?

Many PYP educators would agree that co-constructed success criteria-criteria developed by teachers and students together in partnership-is an effective practice. But as with many inquiry-based, student-centered approaches to learning and teaching, the question remains: How do you take that idea and put it into practice with a group of students?

This year, I tested one approach for developing co-constructed success criteria with a group of grade 4 PYP students. I adapted a growing definition thinking routine to help structure the process of getting 23 students and 1 teacher to agree on what ought to be known and understood by the end of a unit of inquiry.

First, I was transparent with the students about why we were going to do the activity and how important I believe it is for them to have an equal say in what ought to be learned by the end of the unit.

I shared the central idea Decisions about energy can lead to a sustainable future for the unit under the transdisciplinary theme How we organize ourselves that the grade 4 team of teachers had designed and asked the students to think about what they think they should know in order to be able to fully understand the central idea by the end of the unit. Each student individually created their own list.

Then, students took their individual list and joined with another student and worked together to synthesize their lists into a new list that represents both of their thinking.

Next, two sets of partners would combine and repeat the process. Each set of partners would read their list and the newly formed group of four would create a new list that represented everyone's thinking. One group of four would then join with another group of four and that group of eight would create a new list that synthesized everyone's ideas. This pattern would continue until about half the class is working on one list and the other half of the class working on another list.

At this point I collected the two final lists so that I could add any criteria that I felt was missing based on the central idea and conceptual understandings that underpinned the unit. I was amazed to see that the final list the students came up with was almost exactly what we as teachers would have come up with behind closed doors. The closer I looked at the list, the more I realized that many, if not all, of the PYP key conceptual lenses were represented as ways to understand and inquire our central concept of energy.

From here I typed out the list onto our rubric template and only added one criteria for success that I felt was missing.

This rubric became the rubric we used for all diagnostic, self, peer and teacher assessments.

Using the growing definition routine turned out to be a great structure for allowing 23 students and 1 teacher to all have their voices and perspectives heard and honoured in the process of deciding what ought to be known and understood by the end of a unit of inquiry.

Doing this part of assessment planning with students had many positive implications on student learning and also on our class sense of community. Students had a clearer picture of where they needed to be by the end of the unit. The rubric became a tool that students understood and constantly referred to throughout the learning process and helped our class feel more like a community of learners. We were truly partners in the co-construction process, where our voices were equally valued and included in the decisions that were made. Overall, it felt like a fair and inclusive way to respect and support students' involvement in their own learning.

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Taryn BondClegg blogs at Making Good Humans which is her small attempt to continue to make sense of the PYP, of inquiry, and of how to make a real difference in the world through education. Taryn has always felt a calling to change the world - to somehow leave it in a better state than we found it. She saw teaching as a way to make this happen. You can follow her on Twitter

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In this article you will find a framework for co-constructing success criteria with grade 4 students as part of assessment planning. I strongly believe that assessment is something that should be done 'with students', not 'to students'.

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Step back – let your students create their own PE activities

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Step back – let your students create their own PE activities

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Can students connect physical education (PE) to a unit of inquiry and can lower elementary students be in charge of their own PE?
The ultimate goal for a PYP PE teacher is to integrate Personal, social, physical education (PSPE) into a unit of inquiry. When beginning teaching PE in a PYP setting, I was the one thinking of connections and reinventing games that I had previously used, changing them slightly and renaming them. I was satisfied but as I reflected, I realized I could do much better by looking at PE from a different angle. Instead of me creating the activities, I was thinking that the students could easily do it themselves. After all, primary age students are very creative and with 15 creative minds in one class, there would be more chance of having great results.

I decided that for every PE class, from years 3 to 6, I would prepare an activity but before even telling the students what I had planned, I would ask them how they could connect PE to their unit of inquiry. Students came up with a variety of games; for example, a game called book tag that was connect to a How we express ourselves unit on stories around the world, and a Tsunami game that connected to a How the world works unit inquiring into earth changes.

Because I saw that the students could create their own games and activities, I next wanted to see how they could inquire during PE class. I brought out a variety of PE equipment and told the students they could play whatever they liked, but they had to return the things they did not play with anymore. I stood back and watched them. This is what I noticed...

Students were very engaged and started to come up with ideas for games either by themselves or with others. When a student noticed a game that was fun, they would ask if they could join in. They were challenged by seeing others doing things that they wanted to learn to do and they would ask each other for help. Students played in groups that they usually did not play in. The class that usually had the most issues, was very engaged and the usual issues did not come to the surface. After implementing this idea a couple of times, students were very eager to start when they again saw all the equipment out on the floor.

Should you only use this approach? Of course not because there are skills that need to be taught in PE class, and by limiting yourself to this approach some important skills might never be learned. But there is an opportunity for a student-led inquiry in PE and you do not have to dig deep to find it.

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David Lambert has been an international educator for over 12 years. He has been working in several international schools in China. He has worked in Zhuhai International School for one year as a classroom teacher and a PE teacher. He is working towards a Masters in Educational Leadership at the Hong Kong Education University.

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Step back - let your students create their own PE activities

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Can students connect physical education (PE) to a unit of inquiry and can lower elementary students be in charge of their own PE? The ultimate goal for a PYP PE teacher is to integrate Personal, social, physical education (PSPE) into a unit of inquiry.

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PYP students as leaders of learning
Returning as a teacher to the elementary homeroom this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to fully explore the latest themes in PYP education.

The notion of learner agency(1), that students can and should be the drivers of their learning(2), was something that seemed familiar, but in practice would provide me with a year of growth and challenge.

As an early years educator I hold an image of the child(3) that views students as capable, competent and intrinsically-driven inquirers. Encouraged by the PYP's focus on learner agency and action, and eager to apply my philosophy in my new classroom, I was raring to get the school year underway.

Genius hour: My "Brilliant First Flop"(4)

I opened the year by communicating that 'kids are the boss' in our learning environment. Our initial class meetings delved into what being the boss would mean in practice.

The conversations went well and at this stage I was feeling rather pleased. The class agreed that starting a genius hour(5) would be a terrific application of our co-constructed essential agreements.

We were all excited, but our enthusiasm quickly began to wane. Students would arrive at school with burning questions on the tip of their tongues, or a passion for a project that they were desperate to work on. And yet, these flashes of inspiration rarely coincided with our scheduled genius hour.

Of course, we would commit to return to these individual projects either later in the day or week, but it was clear to see that our genius hour had become a non-starter. It seemed like just another part of the schedule that the teacher valued and the students "did". Some students were keen, others benignly obliging, but the thrill was gone(6).
Transdisciplinary learning and the tyranny of the schedule
As I reflected about the lack of spontaneity, and the unresponsiveness of our genius hour sessions, my attention turned to my weekly schedule.

In my previous school's authorization report, an area for attention related to expanding faculty awareness of the transdisciplinary nature of the PYP. I still recall reading the IB's report and cringing in uncomfortable self-recognition.

Yes, I had been guilty of displaying on my whiteboard a daily schedule which I dutifully updated for the students. You might know the type. It was splendidly laminated, enhanced with magnetic backs and had colors corresponding to different subject areas: mathematics, English, unit of inquiry. I thought it was helpful and certainly students have the right to know what to expect from their day.

Yet, by dividing the day into fragmented blocks of time, I was not just reducing learner agency, but also expressing to my students that their learning was unconnected. By boxing curriculum, I was boxing student thinking and their understanding of the world.

I now firmly believe that if you really want to position your students as the owners of their learning, then focusing on who owns the schedule? has to become a priority. Schedules are a balance of many factors and an interplay of the many priorities within schools. Whether school schedules are flexible or rigid depends upon the pedagogical approach taken by teachers and administrators(7).

The classroom schedule had positioned us as disciplinary learners.

I responded by seeking simplicity and flattening the schedule. We established that there would be times when adults would guide or lead learning and times when students would take on this role for themselves and their peers. It was that simple. This was what 'being the boss' would really mean for our class. Educators and students can step in and out of the lead role within a culture of learning.

As the educator, I remained accountable for ensuring we made connections to all the outcomes required by the curriculum and reporting process. At the same time I increased my expectations that my students would also be accountable for approaching their learning as reflective, balanced and enthusiastic students(8).

During our (now student named) Personal Project Learning Time, students could select from a range of learning activities, keeping a balance of their individual learning targets in mind. During any single session, students can work on a variety of tasks, covering all areas of the curriculum. At times, students would add their own learning activities to the menu. This suggests we had started to transition from a learner-centered to a learner-driven model(9). See below several practical tips for implementation.

My next step would be to engage with other adults and classes in the learning community(10) as I have discovered that working in isolation installs a glass ceiling above our heads.

At last, after a year of experimentation and a gradual release of control, the class community is basking in the glow of a more holistic, student-directed learning environment.

As the lead learner in the room, it is highly inspiring to say the least.

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References:

(1) Students take the lead, via SharingPYP blog
(2)Personalization vs. Differentiation vs. Individualization Chart V3.
(3)Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins by Loris Malaguzzi
(4) Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty
(5) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
(6)The Thrill Is Gone by B.B. King
(7)The Case for Time, by Nathaniel Atherton
(8)Six Ways the Teacher's Role is Changing, by John Darcy
(9)The Personalized Learning Look Fors by Kettle Moraine School District
(10)Young Students Benefit from Self-Directed Learning Days by Western Academy of Beijing

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Dylan Meikle is an elementary counselor at United Nations International School Hanoi and is an experienced homeroom teacher in the PYP. He is a member of the IBEN and an Apple Distinguished Educator. Dylan is passionate about learning environments and contributes to a blog on the subject at www.makespace4learning.com. He welcomes feedback, collaboration and further discussion via Twitter @dylan_meikle.

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PYP students as leaders of learning Returning as a teacher to the elementary homeroom this year, I wanted to take the opportunity to fully explore the latest themes in PYP education. The notion of learner agency(1), that students can and should be the drivers of their learning(2), was something that seemed familiar, but in practice would provide me with a year of growth and challenge.

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Designing learning environments in a primary setting

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Designing learning environments in a primary setting

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Teamwork and Collaboration: The same or different?

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Teamwork and Collaboration: The same or different?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This article explores one school's journey to invite parents into the planning process in order to build parent agency and strengthen the learning community.
Parent workshops in schools implementing the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) are a natural way to support the community in understanding the programme. At the International School of Helsinki, we offer many parent workshops such as An introduction to the PYP, Assessment in the PYP and The exhibition. This year, the early years team and I embarked on a new series of parent workshops, Building a unit of inquiry in an effort to support parent agency and strengthen our learning community.

The teachers of our Explorers class, ages 4-6 year olds, invited the class parents to plan our next unit of inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme of "where we are in place and time".

This was planned as a 3-part series, including:

Session 1-Tuning in and building our central idea

Session 2-Lines of inquiry and teacher questions

Session 3-Learning experiences

Our first session included unpacking the transdisciplinary theme. After sharing the aspects of the theme our unit would focus on and the key concepts, as determined by our school's vertical alignment, we spent time exploring the criteria for a central idea. Together we generated many ideas and composed draft central ideas.

During our second session, we confirmed our central idea: "Home and families change over time" and explored the criteria for lines of inquiry. We also reviewed our key concepts. This experience allowed the parents to see how the lines of inquiry provide a scope for as well as extend the inquiry.

We began our third session with sharing the inquiry journey thus far. By doing so, the parents were able to understand how the decisions we made in collaboration with them were being implemented in the learning and teaching of the unit. This process also highlighted the need for students to further explore the concept of how families change. As a group, we brainstormed ideas on how to provide experiences for our students to further understand this concept. Next steps include a scheduled Skype call with grandparents in home countries, parents reading a story to class related to change in families and inviting a family with a new baby into in the class.

We feel the new series of workshops were a success. The commitment and contributions from the parents were amazing as was the feedback from our parents in order to feedforward our planning for future workshop series.

I found the experience a very rewarding and insightful one. It was interesting to see how the teachers approached the planning process. It gave me a much better understanding of the PYP. - Explorers parent

Sharyn Skrtic is the Lower School Assistant Principal and PYP coordinator at the International School of Helsinki in Finland. She is both an online and face-to-face PYP Workshop Leader and School Visit Team Member. Sharyn has presented at educational conferences, including The Association of German International Schools Conference, 21 st Century Learning Hong Kong Conference, and the IB Asia-Pacific Conference in Macau in 2015. She tweets @shaza33.

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This article explores one school's journey to invite parents into the planning process in order to build parent agency and strengthen the learning community. Parent workshops in schools implementing the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) are a natural way to support the community in understanding the programme.

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PZ's Thinking Routines Toolbox | Project Zero

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The Toolbox organizes the Thinking Routines into categories that describe the types of thinking the routines help to facilitate. Some routines appear in more than one category, and some routines have different versions that offer modifications for specific age groups or more specific conceptual challenges.

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Group 1’s incredible team work

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Aesthetically pleasing

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Group 2

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Colleen, Nicky, Natalie, Fred

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Collaboration vs Teamwork: Key Differences between the two concepts

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Collaboration vs Teamwork: Key Differences between the two concepts

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The corporate vocabulary is made up of nice-sounding buzzwords and phrases whose application doesn't necessarily correlate with their true meaning. That is not to say that there is any negative intent behind such application, but rather that some terms are often taken lightly and interpreted without attention to the nuances contained within their definition.

"Teamwork" and "collaboration" both feature prominently in the corporate lexicon, and for a good reason. After all, teamwork and collaboration are truly the cornerstones of a healthy and productive working environment.

Still, even a casual browse through a random sample of "values/vision" pages on business websites will reveal a great deal of misunderstanding and misapplication regarding these terms. "Teamwork" and "collaboration" are often used interchangeably as synonyms, even though there are significant differences in their meanings.

In this article, we will do our best to clarify the distinctions between teamwork and collaboration ( as well as a few other "neighboring" terms), determine where they overlap and where they diverge, and why this distinction is so important.

What is teamwork

Definitions of teamwork are numerous and diverse, depending on the context of its application. The Cambridge Dictionary defines teamwork as "the combined actions of a group of people working together effectively to achieve a goal", while the Merriam-Webster Dictionary provides a slightly different interpretation of "work done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole". Within the business context, we can simply find the common ground between the two interpretations and define teamwork as the joint effort of individuals towards a shared goal.

By its etymology, the term "teamwork" implies the presence of a team. While there is no one universal type of team that practices teamwork, we can identify some of the more common characteristics associated with "teamworking" teams:

Similar skill sets among team members

Individual autonomy of team members

Clear definition and division of roles

Defined leadership and hierarchy

Ironically, the above-mentioned Merriam-Webster definition supports the confusion of the corporate lingo by listing the following terms as synonyms for teamwork: collaboration, cooperation, and coordination. Just like collaboration, the latter two terms should not be considered with teamwork, although they are closely related. Let's take a closer look.

The three Cs of teamwork

In an article titled " Collaboration vs. C-Three ", author Leo Denise states that communication, cooperation, and coordination are the "three Cs" of togetherness, ie. teamwork. Let's see how each one of the three Cs relates to teamwork.

Communication in teamwork refers to the quality of both the understanding and the informational flow between team members. The information shared between members through communication is not limited to factual input regarding various aspects of the shared work, but also emotional input. The ability of team members to process this diversity of informational input healthily and constructively plays a major role in the team's collective ability to perform.
*For more information about team communication visit our Team communication hub.
Coordination is a process that aims to achieve maximum efficiency of a team by synchronizing the activities of individual team members and removing redundancy, repeat work, or any other detrimental work activities. Coordination creates a framework that ensures that everyone pulls in the same direction. In short, it lets all the team members know what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it. Additionally, it provides a perspective on the relationship between individual work and collective achievement.
Communication → Cooperation → Coordination → Teamwork
Cooperation speaks to one's ability to perform as a part of a group, to set aside any selfish goals and actions and consider the interests of the team. When we say that someone is a "team player", we're actually saying that they are cooperative. In itself, cooperation doesn't carry any qualitative evaluation of one's ability to work with others or the team's ability to work together, but merely the fundamental willingness and the potential to do so. Of course, this willingness is one of the elementary prerequisites of teamwork.

Clearly, neither of the "three Cs" can be fully considered synonymous with teamwork, but they do form a natural hierarchy that leads toward it.

Any team-level activity begins with communication and grows into cooperation, with the cooperational activities eventually synchronized into a coordinated collective effort that is the foundation of quality teamwork.

The emotional component of teamwork

Aside from its functional aspects, teamwork is also marked by a strong emotional component implying a higher degree of personal connection between team members and their emotional investment in the quality and the success of their working relationship.

Authors Joe Luca and Pina Tarricone identify five key emotional attributes for quality teamwork:

Self-awareness: the ability to understand and interpret one's own feelings through internal reflection, which leads to a greater degree of understanding of oneself and, consequentially, others.

Self-regulation: the ability to regulate one's emotions in order to facilitate a productive workflow, particularly when faced with pressure situations and conflicts. It requires team members to place the collective work and collective goals ahead of their emotions.

Motivation: the degree of emotional investment into the shared work and the shared goals. Motivation in a team setting is a two-way proposition - our degree of motivation is determined by the support, nourishment, and inspiration we receive from others, while our own actions towards other team members impact their own degree of motivation.

Empathy: the capacity to see things from another person's perspective. Our ability to understand and interpret the feelings or actions of other team members guides our interactions and makes us better equipped to find the right approach to different team members and different situations.

Social skills: the development of a positive, supportive, and productive working environment is largely dependent on the social skills of team members, their ability to handle and deter conflict, to identify and ease any tensions before they escalate.

What is collaboration

We have already dedicated plenty of space to defining collaboration and detailing its basic postulates. Instead of repeating ourselves, we will instead focus on the most relevant distinctions between teamwork and collaboration that will help us harness both to the betterment of teams.

Main differences between teamwork and collaboration

There are many differences between collaboration and teamwork, some more formal and others more substantial, varying in choice and extent depending on the source. In order to avoid theoretical nit-picking, we will instead focus on the two most crucial distinctions that separate the two processes.

Diversity of skills

Unlike the similarity of roles and skillsets commonly associated with teamwork, the diversity of skills, roles, and perspectives is one of the defining qualities of collaboration. Instead of all team members pulling in the same direction, collaboration brings together professionals of diverging expertise in order to combine their skills and insights to realize a shared goal that could not be achieved through the reliance on a single skill set.

Where teamwork relies on coordination to achieve peak productivity, collaboration does not thrive on the adherence to a pre-determined scenario, but rather on improvisation. Collaboration reaches its full potential through the clash of perspectives, an active dialogue between collaborators, and a free exchange of ideas, insights, and opinions that reinforce the team's collective ability to solve problems and fuel innovation.

Creation
"Collaboration is the process of shared creation: two or more individuals with complementary skills interacting to create a shared understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to on their own. "
Teamwork, as well as its earlier evolutionary stages of cooperation and coordination, are rooted in agreement - a shared understanding of individual roles and responsibilities with fairly defined outputs and outcomes. In stark contrast, collaboration is rooted in positive uncertainty and unpredictability - the potential to create something new, rather than perform within a familiar framework of expectations.

The emphasized creative aspect of collaboration is nicely described by Michael Schrage in his book " Shared Minds ":

Collaboration, in opposition to teamwork, thrives on difference and yields the greatest rewards through the challenging of petrified perspectives.

Conclusion

So, does everything previously stated serve to imply an either/or proposition with teamwork and collaboration? Of course not!

Both teamwork and collaboration play a major role in the operations of modern-day organizations. In fact, they often overlap, run parallel, and take place simultaneously or interchangeably. The confusion in terminology doesn't simply stem from a lack of theoretical foundation, but more likely from the commonality and the presence of both teamwork and collaboration in the present-day workplace.

Both teamwork and collaboration are legitimate and effective approaches to getting the job done. Understanding the fundamental differences between the two approaches will help us decide which approach should be utilized in order to achieve different objectives.

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Teamwork vs. collaboration: Key differences

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The corporate vocabulary is made up of nice-sounding buzzwords and phrases whose application doesn't necessarily correlate with their true meaning. That is not to say that there is any negative intent behind such application, but rather that some terms are often taken lightly and interpreted without

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What is the difference between collaboration and teamwork?

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What is the difference between collaboration and teamwork?

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This post is written by Kristy McIntyre, a member of the Edmentum Educator Network . The Network is a professional learning community dedicated to helping educators share ideas, learn from one another, and make genuine peer-to-peer connections.

Making leadership a communitywide effort is key to building a positive school culture that supports every student. But, in order to successfully move toward this kind of leadership and professional development style, establishing a true culture of collaboration is one of the most important prerequisites. Understanding the clear difference between teamwork and collaboration is the first step. Let's break down these two concepts:

Teamwork

What exactly is a team? It is a group of individuals working together toward a joint outcome. As the members work together, every person's individual actions are dependent on each other. As a group, a team works together to achieve a unified result and checks with all members prior to making any decisions. If any member were to make a decision on his or her own, it could potentially have a negative effect within the team as a whole. To make this work, it's critical that when any team is formed, a leader is designated to ensure that members continue working together in harmony, to remove any major disruptions, and to address disputes. Teams may have disagreements within them, but with a leader, they can accomplish a goal.

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it." - Halford E. Luccock

Collaboration

Unlike members of a team, individuals who are in a collaborative group are able to retain their own personal-and possibly, competing-goals while they still successfully work with the group. This is because they will also be embracing those goals and agenda items that they share with other collaborators. Collaborations do not have a single leader; instead, members work toward shared goals as only part of their responsibilities. Without a designated leader, members retain autonomy and learn from one another, as they must solve their own problems within the group.

"Politeness is the poison of collaboration." - Edwin Land

Teamwork or collaboration-which would you prefer?

There is certainly a time and a place for teamwork, but for educators looking to serve their own students and reduce their sense of professional isolation, collaborative groups are clearly the stronger approach. And, a well-thought-out vision for the educational community can provide all that is needed to get started on working collaboratively (check out these 4 Steps to Creating a Shared Vision that Will Energize Your Team if you need a jumpstart to build your vision). This vision must be edited and reviewed frequently to allow for all involved to examine their strategies and determine if daily activities are aligned to the general consensus it presents. A strong vision can also be a way to demonstrate the changing role of the principal in leadership, as the principal becomes more of an equal partner with classroom teachers, parents, and students in the effort to improve. From the vision, principals and other administrators can determine organizational procedures that promote teacher collaboration and impact teacher accountability.

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." - attributed to Edward Everett Hale

Working in isolation does not have to be the reality for educators anymore. As the educational environment becomes more student centered and more stakeholders work within collaborative groups instead of teams, morale will increase. Forward-thinking professional development can expand educators' knowledge of this great difference and can help end the solitude and reduce the workload of educators (more on my ideas about that topic can be found here). Through collaboration, sharing knowledge, and empowering every teacher to become a leader, we can reduce isolation and help educators reconnect with how fulfilling this profession is.

"Effectively, change is almost impossible without industry-wide collaboration, cooperation, and consensus." - Simon Mainwaring

Looking for more ideas to build a positive culture in your school or district? We recently asked over 2,000 educators what they need to succeed in the classroom- check out the results here!

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[Professional Development] What's the Difference Between Teamwork and Collaboration?

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Making leadership a community-wide effort is key to building a positive school culture that supports every student. But, in order to successfully move toward this kind of leadership and professional development style, establishing a true culture of collaboration is one of the most important prerequisites.

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10 Strategies to build on student collaboration in the classroom

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10 Strategies to build on student collaboration in the classroom

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The Graduate School of Education and Human Development

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Collaborative learning - the practice of breaking students into small groups to answer questions, work on projects and learn from one another - has become one of the strongest core philosophies operating in classrooms today.

The concept is not new; much of the early research on collaborative learning (also called cooperative learning) was done in the 1980s and 1990s when most classrooms favored the traditional teacher lectures and individual student work. But with the growth of technology and the increasing value society places on the ability to work in teams, collaborative learning has become more common. Here are 10 strategies for encouraging the success of collaborative learning:

1. Deliberately select which students will work together

Left to their own devices, students will sort themselves into groups of friends who share common bonds. However, when a teacher creates the groupings, he or she can match students by strengths and weaknesses, deliberately mixing ability, diversity and social capability.

2. Size the groups for maximum effectiveness

If a group is too small, ideas and discussion may not be diverse or energetic enough; if too large, some students won't get involved. Optimum group size tends to be four to five.

3. Teach your students how to listen to one another

Among young learners, active listening isn't a natural skill. Taking time to discuss and practice listening skills with your students - teaching them to make eye contact, avoid interruption and repeat important points - has both short and long term benefits.

4. Set the rules of language and collaboration

There will always be one or two students in each group who will be more likely to take the lead - or take over. Take the time to teach students how to clarify issues, how to paraphrase, how to disagree constructively and how to build on what others have contributed.

5. Make goals and expectations clear

Specific goals and expectations are important. If students are not clear on the goals they are expected to meet, group work has the potential to trail off into socialization or apathy.

6. Assign roles to the members of each group

With roles delineated, students are able to better understand what is expected of them. With roles like leader (directs the group's actions for the day), recorder (takes notes and does all writing), encourager (enables discussion and gives positive feedback) and checker (checks the work and hands it in), its clear how each student needs to fulfill his or her responsibilities.

7. Use real-world problems, not imaginary ones

With practical, real-world assignments, students find information through research and forming real opinions. If you find a scenario that they feel involved in - an environmental issue, a recent Supreme Court case, a complicated social issue - they will take more ownership of the project. Even better, select a problem from the students' own community and challenge them to solve it.

8. Consider giving each group a different task

Delegating tasks gives each group a sense of importance and emphasizes the fact that large problems are solved by people working together. By solving different pieces of an issue, your student groups will have a more personalized learning experience and will better refrain from ill-spirited competition or "borrowing" each other's work.

9. Play a game to get students warmed up

This is particularly helpful for younger students, who may not be sure of their roles in the group or the classroom. Cooperative games require children to use the same skills that they do in collaborative schoolwork, and they can see results quickly. For example, Teach Hub offers cooperative classroom games that are appropriate for grades 1-3, grades 4-6 and grades 7-8.

10. Evaluate each group on its own merit

If you judge groups in relation to each other, students will feel like their success or failure is not entirely in their own hands. Try a system where you can give grades per how well each group met its goals, and/or how each student performed the duties of their assigned role. You can also reward by category, as in best discussions, best research or most original solution.

The Changing Trends of Education

Collaborative learning is just one of the countless ways in which education is changing today. To learn more about how you can develop your leadership potential and enhance your career with a Master's in Educational Leadership and Administration, Education Specialist (EdS) and Post-Master's Certificate from the George Washington University, request information or call 202-994-9283.

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10 Strategies to Build on Student Collaboration in the Classroom | The Graduate School of Education and Human Development | The George Washington University

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Collaborative learning, breaking students into groups to work on projects and learn from one another, has become ! of the core philosophies in classrooms today.

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More resources & links to teamwork and collaboration

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More resources & links to teamwork and collaboration

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Here is a document that looks at the three questions posed:
How are collaboration and teamwork both the same and different?
What enables and defines good teamwork and good collaboration?
What perspectives influence your learning community as they engage?
There are also links to resources that discuss collaboration & teamwork, tools to help you implement it in an elementary classroom and strategies to use.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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These are some thoughts about team-building for students under the umbrella of collaboration. Sarah

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Article by Jennifer Piggott

Introduction

Many of the resources on NRICH are built around, or at the very least offer opportunities for, group work. In particular, all the problems published on the NRICH website in May 2010 had "Complex Instruction and Group-worthy tasks" as their theme.

Teachers often remark on how difficult it can be to get learners to work on some mathematics as a team. My response is generally that learners cannot suddenly be expected to work in ways that include listening and responding to the needs of others, sharing ideas and working collaboratively if they have not had sufficient experience of activities that encourage such behaviours. These skills need to be developed over time and so learners need lots of practice.

One way to improve learners' team-working skills is to work in ways that encourage collaboration and sharing mathematical journeys in smaller and larger groups on a regular basis. To develop such an approach it makes sense to use the experiences of others and build on practices that have worked in other situations. Of course there is no perfect answer but using methodologies that have been researched and have some rigour behind them can save a lot of time and reduce the risk. Such research on group working is discussed by Elizabeth Cohen in her book "Designing Groupwork" and utilised by colleagues who worked with Jo Boaler in the UK on Complex Instruction. There are many of what Jo Boaler might describe as 'group-worthy tasks' on the NRICH site. In fact it is hard to find a list of problems that you would not describe as group-worthy if used in a particular way in the classroom.

Many schools who utilise the benefits of group work start by spending a significant amount of curriculum time using activities that offer opportunities to develop team-working skills, knowing that this will pay dividends in the long term. Such tasks are sometimes called skill-building tasks. The skills are group-working skills rather than mathematical skills. This article and the linked resources take this idea and offer some skill-building tasks built around mathematical knowledge. The aim is to make the time spent on them feel less like risk taking because learners will be doing mathematics as they build skills of collaboration. In her book, Elizabeth Cohen lists a set of skills related to working collaboratively which the following is based upon:

Listening

Asking questions - making sense of your own understanding

Explaining by telling how and why

Helping others - by responding to their needs

Helping others - to do things for themselves

Sharing knowledge and reasoning

Finding out what others think - asking for, listening to and making sense of their ideas

Reflecting on and making use of what has been said

Being concise - communicating thinking

Giving reasons for ideas - communicating reasoning

Allowing everyone to contribute

Pulling ideas together - sharing, listening, valuing all contributions

Finding out if the group is ready to make a decision - consensus making.

Developing skills and norms

These collaborative working skills can be developed through particular group activities. Below we offer six categories of team-building activities that can be used to place learners' focuses on a range of the different skills. Underpinning the tasks are some fundamental principles of developing interdependence and developing group and individual accountability.

Interdependence comes in two forms:

Goal interdependence - occurs when each group member can only achieve their goal when other group members have achieved theirs - for example "In the Middle" and "All for One" tasks below are designed to develop this principle.

Resource interdependence - when each group member needs resources or information from other group members to complete their task - for example "Who Needs?" and "Telling How" below.

Group accountability can be associated with all the task types but "Guess the rule" and "What am I?" have a particular focus on this aspect of accountability.

Each category of team-building task has particular rules asssociated with it. These rules are designed to draw out particular team-working skills. It is therefore very important to allow time at the end of each activity for discussing the task and the way teams and indiviudals worked together. If available an observer may be used to focus attention on, and note, particular activities and behaviours.

The Six Categories and Example Problems

1. Who needs?

These tasks are only successfully completed when everyone on the team has completed their part. They depend upon members of the group noticing the needs of others and responding. The tasks are generally completed in silence. They require learners to:

respond to needs of others

help others to do things for themselves.

Examples from NRICH in order of level of mathematical challenge:
The list could go on for ever, but it is also worth mentioning using any set of objects or images for this sort of task. For example:

Sets of Dienes' Logiblocs. Ask teams to collect sets based on similar properties. Part of the task could be that the team discusses whether the sets are logically connected - all triangles here - all squares there, or all thick shapes here ... etc;

Sets of mathematical solids, or counters (each player ends up with one of every colour or all the same colour or ...)

2. In the middle - Pulling ideas together to produce a single product

A designer makes an arrangement of objects without the team seeing it. The team has to recreate the arrangement by asking questions. These tasks depend on groups working collaboratively, discussing and reasoning to agree a final product in the minimum number of questions. These tasks require learners to:

listen and find out what others think

give reasons for ideas

pull ideas together

find out if the group is ready to make a decision.

Examples from NRICH in order of level of challenge:
Note that these examples can be easily changed to make them harder or easier.

You can create similar problems using any set of materials such as:
3D solids (build a church with a spire and see if the team can recreate it!), sets of polygons (create regular or semi-regular tessellations).
3. Explaining how - Giving and following instructions to produce individual products

A designer gives instructions to members of the team so that they can create a mathematical object or picture identical to that made by the designer. No one on the team can see anyone else's work. Tasks in this category require learners to explain and help others, asking and answering questions. Learners must complete the task themselves but with support and advice which is asked for and given. They encourage learners to:

help others to do things for themselves

respond to the needs of others - everybody helps everybody

explain by telling how.

Examples from NRICH in order of level of challenge:

Similar tasks might involve:

cr eating a 3-D image made of cubes or solids,

creating a mathematical construction using a ruler and pair of compasses (for example a petal pattern or constructing an equilateral triangle or hexagon),
4. Guess the rule - Collaboration and reasoning to come to a shared decision
These tasks depend on learners sharing reasoning, listening to opinions, reflecting and pulling ideas together. The team guesses the rule in the minimum number of questions. These tasks require learners to:

find out what others think

give reasons for ideas

be concise

reflect on what has been said

allow everyone to contribute.

Examples from NRICH in order of level of challeng e:
Similar tasks can be created using:

number cards. Rules might include: only even numbers, only square numbers etc.

Dienes' Logiblocs (see this NRICH problem). With rules including: all red, all triangles, all thin shapes etc.

5. What am I? - Asking and answering questions to draw conclusions

Tasks which develop the communication of reasoning. By framing and asking questions a member of the team has to find out what mathematical object they have chosen. These tasks require learners to:
Examples from NRICH in order of level of challenge:

ask questions - making sense of their own understanding

be concise

listen

reflect on what has been said.

6. All for one - Collaboration towards a single goal
Which statistical diagram?

Tasks which develop the skills of sharing reasoning and agreeing, through the production of a single product. These tasks require learners to:

allow everyone to contribute

listen

ask questions and find out what others think

share knowledge and reasoning

reflect, and make use of, what has been said

come to a consensus.

Examples from NRICH in order of level of challeng e:

Simpler, or more complex versions, of each of these tasks can be produced. For example:
At higher levels it is possible to generate a function from given information such as turning points, points of intersection with axes, an integral, part of the image of the curve and so on.
A series of beads threaded on a string can be generated by learners sharing the images on their cards, or a line of Compare Bears.

Some final advice

As these skills are developed, learners will also develop team norms, that is the set of rules or guidelines that shape the way they work with each other. Once developed, team norms are used to guide team member behaviour. Team norms are used to assess how well team members are interacting. Team norms enable team members to challenge "non-norm" behaviour. For example, challenging another member of the team who is not listening to the ideas of others.

References

Cohen, E. G. (1994) Designing Groupwork - Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. Second Edition, Teachers College Press.

A pdf of this article can be downloaded: Developing Good Team Primary.pdf

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Developing Good Team-working Skills in Primary Schools

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Article by Jennifer Piggott Many of the resources on NRICH are built around, or at the very least offer opportunities for, group work. In particular, all the problems published on the NRICH website in May 2010 had "Complex Instruction and Group-worthy tasks" as their theme.

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This one is more about achieving clarity of roles and expectations in staff teams to improve outcomes and build staff well-being. Sarah

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Simple but powerful advice: Clear roles, expectations, and reflection can improve collaboration.

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We've all heard the saying, "Teamwork makes the dreamwork," but nobody ever asks how? How exactly does teamwork and good collaboration create high functioning teams?

As technology evolves and transforms the way we all work, we're increasingly called on to perform complex and cross-functional tasks with others. In this article we will discuss the advantages and importance of effective collaboration.

What is good collaboration

According to a 2008 National Institutes of Health research, "Increasing specialization of skills means that you need collaboration amongst bigger and bigger groups, in order to be successful." With this need comes new questions. What makes for successful workplace collaboration? How does team collaboration improve employee satisfaction, team motivation, and create more value for companies?

In team settings, communication can make or break a collaborative project. Check out this comprehensive guide on great communicators, the do's and don'ts when it comes to communicating, and how to use this skill to improve your collaboration skills.

Why do collaborative efforts matter

When professionals have a backbone of support, they can fulfill their team needs and job requirements by fostering successful collaboration. Collaborations based on direct communication, clear responsibilities, and mutual trust helps provide value to the customers you serve. An added bonus is that healthy employee collaboration practices make life at work happier too.

Check out one of our favorite TED Talks, "A Guide To Collaborative Leadership." Speaker Lorna Davis discusses how relying on just one person for a solution is dangerous. In actuality we need "radical interdependence," or collaboration.

Fresh new ways to promote collaboration

Effective collaboration is easier said than done. But the good news is there are many different ways to achieve effective collaboration. Here are some ways of making the road to happy collaboration a little less bumpy.

🎉 Create thoughtful and fun events. Opt for casual and optional social events. Low-pressure, informal spaces like lunches and game nights can break the ice and help you build rapport between you and your team. So, when the time comes to roll up the sleeves, you'll have a foundation with your team to work off.

🙌 Prompt feedback after collaborating together. Proactively ask for feedback by building it into your work culture. The next time you finish a presentation, ask your team to provide feedback on a specific skill related to your presentation right away. Psst, Matter is a great way to get valuable and relevant feedback.

💪 Leverage superpowers. Connect team members who complement each other. This can empower individuals to flex their superpowers and give them the opportunity to work on their blind spots with the help of their teammate.

👯‍♀️ Recognize collaborative behaviors. Consider giving a shoutout or sending a kudos to peers who work together. A great way to collaboration is giving recognization. Encouraging and celebrating team members to work together and will prompt them team up often.

📬 Send "needed/optional" meeting invites. Mention if a person's presence is "needed" or "optional" in meeting invitations to be inclusive and respectful of their time. "Optional" allows the attendee to judge for themselves whether or not their attendance is required. This takes the guesswork out of going to a meeting and helps put people at ease when collaborating.

🌒 Set a reply standard. Replying to messages in "off hours" may seem helpful in the moment, but can damage your collaborative relationship. If you need to send a message, consider prefacing it with, "Apologies for sending a late message. I wanted to make sure I got you the information I promised you. Please don't feel the need to reply to this until tomorrow."

Keep on the lookout for good collaboration 👀

Good collaboration is not black and white. Instead effective collaboration shows itself in many different ways, both big and small. Keep an eye out for it by carving out time to reflect on your collaborations and stay open to feedback. This way you and your team can get better at working together!

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What Does Good Collaboration Among Teams Look Like?

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We've all heard the saying, "Teamwork makes the dreamwork," but nobody ever asks how? How exactly does teamwork and good collaboration create high functioning teams? As technology evolves and transforms the way we all work, we're increasingly called on to perform complex and cross-functional tasks with others.

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Over the years, as teams have grown more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic, collaboration has become more complex. But though teams face new challenges, their success still depends on a core set of fundamentals. As J. Richard Hackman, who began researching teams in the 1970s, discovered, what…

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The Bloom's taxonomy (1956) has been extensively used in teacher education to suggest learning and teaching strategies, has formed the basis of many tests developed by teachers (at least while they were in teacher training), and has been used to evaluate many tests.

However, the SOLO (structure of observed learning outcome) taxonomy developed by Biggs and Collis (1982) is the most powerful model for understanding the three levels (surface, deep, conceptual) and integrating them into learning intentions and success criteria.

SOLO or Bloom's - What to Prefer?

This is a common question that haunts most of our educators' minds. Intentional use of learning taxonomies in classroom assessment is both relevant and worthwhile. Whether you prefer SOLO or Bloom's doesn't matter. What does make a difference is the deliberate and accurate alignment between the learning intentions and their assessment.

Here is the list of key differences that will help you to decide your preference.

1. SOLO taxonomy is research/evidence based on structure of student learning outcomes while Bloom's taxonomy was developed from proposal by a committee of educators.

2. SOLO is a theory about teaching and learning while Bloom's theory is about knowledge.

3. SOLO is based on levels of ascending cognitive complexity while Bloom's has questionable hierarchical link between levels. This is powerful when giving feedback, feed-forward and feed-up. Enables proximate - hierarchical - explicit feedback For example - Educators and students find it easy to determine what they are doing - the SOLO complexity of the task - Educators and students find it easy to reliably and validly determine how well it is going - SOLO differentiated success criteria - Educators and students find it easy to reliably and validly determine their next steps - plus one SOLO level.

4. SOLO has high inter-rater reliability - educators and students tend to agree when moderating student work against SOLO levels - while Bloom's has low inter-rater reliability.

5. SOLO levels can be communicated through text, hand signs and symbols - across large and noisy learning environments while Bloom's levels can be communicated by text alone.

6. SOLO allows task and outcome to be at different levels while Bloom's not designed/cannot be used to level outcomes against each task.

7. SOLO enables us to distinguish between the cognitive complexity of a task and the difficulty of a task.

8. SOLO has clarity of verb use for each level. Clarity of verb level is a powerful advantage when educators are planning and writing learning intentions whereas Bloom's has confused verb use across levels.

9. SOLO can be used to look at levels of declarative knowledge and functioning knowledge including metacognitive reflection.

10. SOLO is brutally and blissfully simple and can be used by students as young as five to look at their own learning outcome and the learning outcomes of their peers

11. SOLO is a model that shows students that learning is the result of effort and strategies NOT fixed ability or being liked. It shows learning progress and a plus 1 next step for every learner

Advantages of the SOLO taxonomy over the Bloom's taxonomy for student learning

There are several advantages of the SOLO model over the Bloom's taxonomy in the evaluation of student learning. These advantages concern not only item construction and scoring, but incorporate features of the process of evaluation that pay attention to how students learn, and how teachers devise instructional procedures to help students use progressively more complex cognitive processes.

Unlike the Bloom taxonomy, which tends to be used more by teachers than by students, the SOLO can be taught to students such that they can learn to write progressively more difficult answers or prompts.

In SOLO, There is a closer parallel to how teachers teach and how students learn.

Both teachers and students often progress from more surface to deeper constructs and this is mirrored in the four levels of the SOLO taxonomy.

There is no necessary progression in the manner of teaching or learning in the Bloom's taxonomy.

The SOLO levels can be interpreted relative to the proficiency of the students. Six year old students can be taught to derive general principles and suggest hypotheses, though obviously to a different level of abstraction and detail than their older peers. Using the SOLO method, it is relatively easy to construct items to assess such abstractions.

The SOLO taxonomy not only suggests an item writing methodology, but the same taxonomy can be used to score the items. The marker assesses each response to establish either the number of ideas (one = unistructural; two = multi-structural), or the degree of interrelatedness (directly related or abstracted to more general principles). This can lead to more dependability of scoring.

Unlike the experience of some with the Bloom taxonomy it is relatively easy to identify and categorize the SOLO levels.

Moreover, teachers could be encouraged to use the 'plus one' principle when choosing appropriate learning material for students. That is, the teacher can aim to move the student one level higher in the taxonomy by appropriate choice of learning material and instructional sequencing.

OTHER RELATED POSTS SOLO Taxonomy Cognitive Domain - Bloom's Taxonomy The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

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SOLO Taxonomy versus Bloom's Taxonomy - Educare ~ We Educate, We Care.

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May 12, 2021 - SOLO or Bloom? What to prefer? Whether you prefer SOLO or Bloom's doesn't matter. What does make a difference is the deliberate and accurate alignment

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SOLO TAXONOMY

As learning progresses it becomes more complex. SOLO, which stands for the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess students' work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they have got right. At first we pick up only one or few aspects of the task ( unistructural), then several aspects but they are unrelated ( multistructural), then we learn how to integrate them into a whole ( relational), and finally, we are able to generalised that whole to as yet untaught applications ( extended abstract). The diagram lists verbs typical of each such level.

SOLO can be used not only in assessment, but in designing the curriculum in terms of the level of learning outcomes intended, which is helpful in implementing constructive alignment. SOLO can also explain why those who use low complexity arguments in political or marital disputes usually win - in the short term. But in politics that's all you need, as is illustrated in the 2019 Australian election: Party A, a well worked out social democrat package of benefit to most Australians; Party B, "cut taxes", strongly to the advantage of the rich, and call the leader of Party A a liar "he lies all the time". And yes, Party B won.

SOLO was first described by Kevin Collis and myself in Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy (New York: Academic Press, 1982, now out of print, but available in Chinese).

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SOLO TAXONOMY As learning progresses it becomes more complex. SOLO, which stands for the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome, is a means of classifying learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling us to assess students' work in terms of its quality not of how many bits of this and of that they have got right.

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Tools and Graphic Organizers to guide thinking at different levels of SOLO 

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Tools and Graphic Organizers to guide thinking at different levels of SOLO 

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How to DEFINE using a SOLO Taxonomy Map - HookED

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SOLO Taxonomy Question Chain Example (1)

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How to CLASSIFY using a SOLO Taxonomy Map

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How to CLASSIFY using a SOLO Taxonomy Map

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How to CLASSIFY using a SOLO Taxonomy Map - HookED