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The article I read was 5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration. I chose this article because I still struggle to find ways to incorporate true collaboration in my classroom that is different from students asking each other questions or working on a project step together.

While I was reading my article, the one thing that stuck out to me the most was the first strategy: Create Learning Activities That Are Complex. I chose the above article, because I believe it is a process that all teachers can use to help create complex, multi-step activities for our students. The Engineering Design Process (EDP) is a "structured, cyclical inquiry method that guides problem-solving and innovation". The EDP is a great tool to create collaboration in the classroom. Not only does it promote collaboration, using the EDP can help students develop practical skills (i.e hands-on learning) and promote real-world connections.

Collaboration in the classroom is important because students need to know how to work with people. In own students, so many of them won't ask anyone but me for help. Even when prompted, most of the time they choose to sit and do nothing rather than asking another student. They also have difficult time problem solving when they are collaborating; if one student isn't doing any of the work or the group runs into any issue at all, they don't address the problem, let alone try to solve it. Students are going to graduate and become adults. Knowing how to communicate, problem-solve (as a group), and work with other people is something they are going to experience. Learning those skills in the classroom is setting them up for success in the future.

This coming school year I will be teaching a new course, Intro to STEAM - 9th grade STEAM Academy students. My goal for the semester is to incorporate collaboration in everything I can. In the course, students will be taking a deep exploration of the EDP and completing various design challenges throughout the marking period (it is only a marking period-long course). In order to be successful in the course, they will need to learn how to collaborate with their peers.

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Newsela | Teach the Engineering Design Process to Your Students

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Discover what the engineering design process is, why it’s valuable in K-12 classrooms, and tips you can use to start creating EDP lessons for your students.

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In the article Develop Global Collaborators: Connect Your Students to Classrooms Around the World, advantages to positive learning experiences through global connections are explained and supported. Various resources are given to help you connect your students with students located around the world in an online platform. The video by Michael Graffin - The Global Classroom Project (above) explains his involvement in starting this project as a second year teacher in Australia. He encourages teachers to just take the first step by finding a platform to communicate with other classes around the world. The platform should be something they are comfortable using. He said it does not matter how you do it, but rather that you try. Collaboration is important for students because they will eventually meet or be working with people from around the world at some point in their lives if they have not already. It is also eye opening for students and broadens their horizons to see things from another viewpoint that they may never have if not given this opportunity. In my classroom, students from 9th - 11th and sometimes 12th grade are in the same class. Groups are formed for them to work together on a logic or 9 piece puzzle or other activity where communication is a focus. Sometimes this is difficult for my students, even if it is with students from a different social group than them. What I would like to see going forward is communication with students from another country to add perspective on how they live as well as what collaboration looks like in their math class. I believe that this would be very eye opening for my students because we live in a small, rural community where people tend to stay even after they graduate. Collaboration is imperative to mind growth and character development for all.

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Michael Graffin - The Global Classroom Project

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The article that I chose to read for the Padlet discussion is “5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration” by Mary Burns.  I chose this article because our math department recently made the shift from traditional lessons to utilizing the Experience First, Formalize Later lesson design by Math Medic.  This lesson design does exactly what the title suggests and gives students an opportunity to collaborate on a math task to first gain experience with the content before the teacher formalizes their findings/learnings.  Since we are learning about this lesson design and it revolves around student collaboration, I wanted to take this article reading as an opportunity to try to find suggestions and guidance to improve my student collaboration experience while working through these lessons moving forward.

The image that I chose is an example of student collaboration taking place at a vertical non-permanent surface (the whiteboard) to complete a lesson activity.  The image references “Building Thinking Classrooms” which is a book written by Peter Liljedahl that plays a large role in how the classroom needs to be designed to allow for effective collaboration.  The classroom design and the lessons themselves from Math Medic allow for students to have multiple opportunities for “discussion and consensus.”  These are topics that the article references as ways to deepen student collaboration due to rich discussion and the opportunity for the students to reach consensus before adding their work to the Vertical Non-Permanent Surface.  This is not only something that is done sporadically throughout the days in my classroom, but every lesson gives students the opportunity for this lesson discourse.

Collaboration is something that is very important in today’s classroom.  Things like real-world preparation, deeper academic understanding, and social emotional development are skills that students will need to take with them as they transition from high school to the college learning environment and/or the workforce.  The more effective we as teachers can make collaboration in our classrooms, the better we set students up for future success no matter what their future endeavors look like or what their specific area of expertise will be.

Currently in my classroom, collaboration takes the form of the Experience First, Formalize Later lesson design as described earlier in my post.  I use randomized grouping to create groups of three for student collaboration on each lesson activity.  From there, jobs are assigned (the same jobs each time but assigned to different students) so that students can effectively collaborate to complete the activity.  During the activity, student collaboration looks and sounds like mathematical discussions where students state their thoughts, those thoughts are questioned by their peers and then defended with mathematical justification, and lastly placed on the whiteboard as the answer or solution to that part of the activity.  Classroom discussions take place at the activity’s conclusion and the learning is then formalized by me.  Students get to practice then either working individually or with a partner/small group but the choice is theirs after the activity has been completed.

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The video High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation is basically a real-life look at Mary Burns's first tip about making assignments complex. Burns explains that if a task is too simple, students will fly right through it and not collaborate. English teachers in the video deal with this exact issue by completely tossing out traditional book reports. Instead, they have students read Elie Weisel's Night and work in groups to find and advocate for modern day marginalized groups. This ties perfectly to the point in the article because it forces students to actually share a thinking space and solve an authentic problem together rather than working in a bubble. Getting students to work together isn't just about keeping them busy; it prepares them for how the real world operates. Both the video and the article show that real collaboration pushes students out of the passive mode and forces them to talk, listen, and think critically. It also keeps students engaged who would normally zone out during a lecture. When kids get to bounce ideas off of each other, they are forced to defend their arguments and look at problems or situations from a new angle. To do this right in a high school English class, you have to move past the basic worksheets and focus on big, dramatic literary themes. Instead of a typical essay on Macbeth or Lord of the Flies, student team could investigate a modern political or social breakdown that mirrors the text. I would like to see collaboration implemented in my classroom by keeping the groups small. This is key, so that nobody can secretly hide or slide without contributing. Also, each student needs a meaningful role, like text analysis or context researcher, so they feel a sense of ownership. Finally, I need to take a step back from lecturing or doing full class discussions and act more like a sideline coach who guides the process rather than just feeding them the answers.

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High School Teachers Meet the Challenges of PBL Implementation

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Collaborative learning can allow students to get the most of their experience when they communicate effectively. In the posted article, 10 Main Benefits of Collaborative Learning, Sofia Kondrat shares the benefits collaborative learning can bring and brief descriptions of each. Using the attached YouTube video, students can dive deeper into one of these concepts – communicating effectively. Most students, when they hear about how to communicate, focus solely on how they’re speaking. Rather, active listening is a vital part of the communication process and one that is often overlooked and misunderstood. The attached video would serve as a great tool to show students the act of effectively communicating with their peers. These communications can enhance group/partner work while also being helpful in school social situations, team sports, and group activities like band and chorus.

In our Social Studies class, partner work happens multiple times during the week, so knowing how to effectively communicate, even with people who aren’t your close friends or even friends at all, is vital to their success. Our partnerships start at the very beginning of the school year as we set up what I call the “Table for…” activity. In this activity, I give students 3 questions they must share answers with others in the room. In the first question students must find 1 partner, the next question they create a group of 3, and the final is a group of 5. Students get to share and connect with their peers, and in some cases meet people for the first time. What they don’t know is that they’re setting up their collaborative groups that they’ll keep the rest of the marking period – groups of 2, 3, and 5, which we’ll use for our groups all year long. This activity, one of the first we do during the school year, requires students to effectively communicate with their peers whether they’ve known them for years or are new connections. After I’ve modeled this before the activity starts, it becomes a great opportunity for kids to connect in a mature and productive war.

During time in my classroom, we focus heavily on the title of the class – SOCIAL studies – and I often explain that this is an entire class of studying how people connect to one another. These connections focus heavily on collaboration, disagreement, agreement, and the way in which people work together. Students see how people have agreed and disagreed throughout our nation’s history, even while each was fighting for what they felt to be the common good of the United States of America. In our classrooms, students need to see that people, even when disagreeing, can work together in a civilized and kind way. This will be a great life lesson for them to take into the real world.

The key moral of the story though is that students will need to communicate effectively with others in any job or profession they eventually step into. Thus, communication becomes just as important and vital a lesson as anything we are teaching in any classroom. Through the video, students are shown examples of effective communication in a humorous manner.

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Active Listening: How To Communicate Effectively

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The article that I chose to read and evaluate for discussion post is from Edutpoia; "5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration," specifically because I utilize collaboration a great deal in my class already and wanted to investigate strategies to improve my practice.

The article mentions the need to create challenging activities that require discussion between group members and cannot be completed individually. In addition, the article discusses the need to establish norms within the group and how to handle disagreements in order to effectively collaborate on a deeper level which can be trouble spots when implementing a collaborative project into your classroom. The video I provided hits on these two points explicitly as essential elements to any classroom that implements collaboration as a practice to develop deeper learning of learning targets.

Education has changed greatly over the years and in particular the ways in which we teach Social Studies. In the past, the focus was on acquiring content knowledge and then regurgitating that knowledge on a unit exam, never to be used again and most likely forgotten once the year was over. The shift in education, to provide skills that students can apply across the board in all subjects has necessitated a change in how we teach and what we expect students to learn. Instead of learning names and dates, students are expected to use their knowledge to solve real world problems which is at the core of social studies as a discipline. For example, students learn about the events of World War II and then work in groups to identify problems facing European nations after the event and then propose solutions to those problems. Afterwards, students can then compare and contrast their solutions to those generated by the Allied nations in the 1940’s.

Since my class is content heavy, I need to strike a balance between collaborative activities that are strictly student centered and teacher lead instruction. With a finite amount of time I need to pick and choose the times that I drive the instructional process and when the instruction can be student led. One such example of collaboration in my class occurs in our culminating project in which students research current issues in regions in Europe, propose a solution and then request support in a mock European Union Parliamentary debate. The initial research is individual but then the project becomes collaborative when students compare research and identify which topics that are the most significant and worthy of focus. Together, the group develops a solution and then resolution to solve their problem by asking the rest of the European Union community for help. This activity is complex and requires discussion between group members that would not have happened in a social studies classroom of the past. It is truly inspiring to see and hear the resolutions that students develop and put forth to the EU Parliament. To prevent students from riding on the coattails of others students are required to ask questions during presentations prior to a general vote.

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The article I am basing my discussion post on is through Edutopia: “5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration.” I chose this article, specifically, because I just wrapped up my final presentation for the year, and I always struggle with the students who lack motivation but receive a similar grade to their group members. At this point in the year, students suggest who they’d like to work with. My colleague and I combine classes to make this a higher-stakes presentation and to give students more options to collaborate. We stress the importance of selecting people you can work well with. A majority of the groups do fantastic. However, there are always a couple of students who work in successful groups that seem to be more of a distraction than a helpful collaborator. This article provided great insight as to how to build up group work to be beneficial for all group members.

Make assignments complex→encourages group work

Prepare students→team building exercises, discussions, expectations

Minimize opportunities to free-ride→student rubrics, self-assessments, team roles, smaller groups

Make discussion necessary→students work together to solve problems

Encourage growth→design learning around how each student can grow (feedback)

The infographic I found relates to my article because it highlights the importance of having a purpose for group work. Some teachers run into the issue where they allow students to work together without a purpose. As this article states, students need a complex assignment to collaborate properly. Otherwise, this is where copying or ignoring one another comes into play. Here, you can see that teacher collaboration, independent work, and group work all have a key role in a student's learning and understanding. However, group work does not come until students have had time to work with the material and think it over. This allows them to share ideas to come to a deeper understanding.
Collaboration is essential in the classroom to encourage students to see and think through different perspectives. One of the most important skills to have in the world is empathy and understanding. When students are able to listen and work with peers who may think differently than their original way of perceiving something, they are growing and adapting. This skill will be used in nearly every potential job and situation they’ll face in the future. It is one of the most critical things we can help students become comfortable with and master.

Currently, I approach collaboration in a few different ways in my classroom. First, I select monthly “core groups” where students are placed in a group of 3-5 students. These students are not typically friends. I split students up based on learning styles or skill level. When I want students to collaborate quickly or on a higher end, I ask them to get with these assigned groups. Additionally, I allow students to select a partner. Sometimes I give them an option and other times I say, “Find a partner who…” I do my best to encourage students to branch out with new peers; however, a lot of times in 7th grade I am not successful. Students are reluctant to pair up with new peers, even if their choices tend to hold them back. I would love to continue to grow my understanding of collaboration to promote a higher level of group work and discussion skills among students with both friends and students they do not typically work with.

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The article I chose, “Fostering Collaboration Among Young Students Using Digital Tools,” related to the video I watched because they both focus on using digital tools to foster collaboration in an elementary classroom. The article talked about how technology and digital tools can be integrated with young learners through the “guidance from an educator.” It explained two scaffolded approaches to collaboration, turn-taking and color-coded collaboration. One digital tool that could support color-coded collaboration is Seesaw. The video explained how students can use Seesaw to collaborate through tagging features. Although this requires prep work from the teacher, it allows students to access and interact with their partner’s work while also staying in their own digital space. As students are familiar with Seesaw, I thought this would be a great tool to use for students to collaborate with their peers.

Collaboration plays an important role in classrooms for a variety of reasons. First, one of our readings from this week emphasized the importance of communication skills as students get older. It is essential to provide students with opportunities to practice these skills. Collaboration also increases student motivation and engagement when they get to work with their peers and when the lessons are more interactive. Additionally, collaboration provides students with opportunities to practice teamwork, problem-solving, patience, respect, etc. These are all important skills to have and collaborative activities provide students with opportunities to practice these skills.

In my classroom, collaboration occurs on a daily basis. Throughout the school day, students turn-and-talk to a partner or to their group to share their ideas, answer a question, or explain their thinking. For example, in science, I have had students create a poster or complete different tasks with a group. I have also incorporated collaborative activities during math lessons when students are solving problems. In reading and writing, students read part of a story together, answer comprehension questions, or share responses to writing prompts. I would love to incorporate more collaboration using tech tools next school year!

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Student Collaboration with Tagging in Seesaw

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I read the article "The Benefits of Collaboration in Project Based Leaning" and found this infographic to be very supportive of the article. I utilize collaborative learning as part of my daily routing as well as for projects. With the group that I had this school year it created some challenging days, however, in the end I choose to incorporated a collaborative learning environment for the reasons on the infographic. I believe the Science content is important, however, I feel that the lessons learned through working with others as well as the general interest in Science is an important part of my job as Middle School Teacher.

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10 Main Benefits of Collaborative Learning 

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I read the article "10 Main Benefits of Collaborative Learning". This graph connects to my article because it shows people of all backgrounds each contributing a different piece of the puzzle to create a much bigger picture.

Collaboration is important in our daily classrooms for so many reasons. Collaboration promotes conversations, discussions, interactions that would not occur if it were not for the intentional collaboration the teacher is enforcing. It is also important because it helps promote problem solving skills, something that I feel our students are greatly lacking in these days. When something becomes difficult, they often tend to give up, walk away, or just turn to AI, but collaborating forces the students to work through the hard and come to a solution for the problem.

I probably do not use collaboration as much as I should in my classroom, something I will admit usually ends up becoming more of a hassle for me than anything. I don't feel my students have ever really been taught how to work together so it usually turns into bickering and kids refusing to do anything and then more students complaining that they are doing all the work. I tend to get overwhelmed trying to teach all the standards before state testing, that sometimes simply run out of time for the collaborating that I should be doing. Something I hope to improve upon next year!

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I chose 10 Main Benefits of Collaborative Learning, and this infographic does a great job summarizing the information in a one-page infographic. These benefits, outlined above and in the article, explain why collaboration is so important! Students develop a deeper understanding of the content, and they learn teamwork skills that will benefit our students in their future outside of school. We are implementing iReady curriculum that focuses a lot on collaboration. I look forward to exploring more structured collaboration expectations that help students develop into collaboration experts!

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I read the article Develop Global Collaborators: Connect your Students to Classrooms Around the World. I chose the above video because, as a world language teacher, one of my main goals is to help my students learn how to communicate in a language other than their own, and to learn about different cultures as well.  This video is a perfect demonstration of how students from a classroom in Vermont were able to connect with a classroom in Mexico, and gained an appreciation and better understanding of others without leaving their seats!  By encouraging global collaboration in our students, we afford for them the opportunity to understand and respect not only the many differences in other cultures, but for the many similarities all humans share. This process also nurtures social skills (the sheer ability to actually talk to one another, which has been suffering ever since Covid.  By connecting with others around the world their own age, our students can also increase their cognitive skills such as perspective and self-awareness, making them better global citizens.

Currently, I think I provide a variety of opportunities for my students to collaborate with each other in their new language within our classroom, but I could do better with having them collaborate globally.  In the past, I have used websites such as ePals to help in this process, but unfortunately, it was not a streamlined process.  Making connections with other teachers was not always effective, and the effort to collaborate on meaningful projects was only fruitful if both teachers were equally invested. I hope to create more opportunities moving forward for my students to communicate globally in a meaningful way.

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The Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education

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How can students make global connections?

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Collaborative Learning Guide: Increase Student Engagement with Collaborative Learning

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This article expresses the importance of collaboration in the classroom. I selected this image because it captures the vibe that occurs in the classroom when students are engaged in their learning, collaborating, and sharing ideas to achieve a common goal.

This article dives into the benefits of collaborative learning but also highlights different styles of learning groups. My students are set up into learning groups in my classroom, usually groups of 3-5 students, depending on the class size. This setup allows them to communicate and collaborate while working toward a solution to a math task. I connected with the section on discussing that teachers sometimes need to step in to support learning groups. Sometimes we can make assumptions that all students have worked with this style of learning before; however, that might not always be the case, especially with new entrants. Focusing on relationship building can help and encourage students to work together, even if they are still getting to know one another.

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An engaged classroom of middle school students collaboarting and working together with technology on a project

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Article: 5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration

This graphic connects to the article because the article was all about things to consider when trying to get students to work effectively together on a task, which made me envision how wonderful it would be to get all students socially and academically involved somewhat equally on a constructive learning discussion and goal.  The article provides tips for helping students feel like they have an important job and keeping them on task.  It stresses the importance of intentionally planning collaboration because no group of students is just going to master it on their own.  Students need to:  have complex tasks that they cannot do on their own, feel like they have a skill that they can use to support a team, know their role and feel valued, understand the task, and have social skill guidance.

Collaboration is an important practice in our classrooms because it gets students to share thoughts verbally with their peers about topics they are learning about.  Students can start to feel more comfortable engaging in conversations about academics and practice listening to and processing the thoughts of others while working together toward a common goal. Students can practice, critical thinking, social emotional skills all at the same time, while learning about different takes on the same observation.  These are all skills that students need to have to grow into productive, respectful, and professional and adults, so practicing them in a variety of ways in school is very important.

In my classroom, there are usually students who collaborate, but don’t like physically documenting anything, students who want to be the documenters, but don’t feel comfortable talking a lot, students who want to do it all by themselves, and students who don’t want to participate at all.  Once students have their jobs in a group activity, their prior knowledge about the students that they work with kicks in, and students tend to repeatedly go toward choosing the same roles over and over.  Sometimes I can give students enough support and tips that they are willing to try something new, but usually forcing changes makes some of them become awkward and silent.  Others are happy to try something new.  I suspect that with enough collaborative task practice and more front-loading, students will be more apt to try new things because they know they are all trying new things.  I currently teach math, but when I taught reading, I did assign students roles in literature circles and they would take turns with the different roles.  I think I need to be more decisive about the roles that students take in my math groups so that they can become more familiar and hopefully more comfortable with them.  I’d like to try that this year and hear suggestions for roles that other people have assigned for students in collaborative math groups.

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I read "Collaborative Learning Guide:
Increase Student Engagement with Collaborative Learning." I found this YouTube video specifically on the method Think-Pair-Share. This video shows how these young elementary students "know the drill" on how to have these discussions with their partners as soon as the teacher prompts them during a read-a-loud. As the article states, one of the great things about an informal group time like this is how quick it is. It gives students the chance to think, collaborate and then move on to one of the million other things that need to happen in an elementary classroom. The article talks about the importance of having rules and expectations for these group activities, which the teacher in this video has clearly done with consistency.

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Classroom Protocols in Action: Think-Pair-Share

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5 Strategies to Deepen Student Collaboration 

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The article I read was 5 strategies to deepen student collaboration. I chose this image because I felt like summed up the article perfectly. Collaboration is all about working together as a team or group. Each person has a meaningful part in the assigned work. This picture also pulls together all aspects of what student collaboration could look like. Collaboration is an important practice in our classrooms because it allows students to work on their social interaction skills along with critical thinking skills. In my classroom, collaboration looks like teamwork. Students are collaborating as a team to accomplish a goal or a task. For example during the activity "Cross the River" students are placed in a team and have to work together to move across the imaginary river using the equipment provided without touching the floor. Collaboration is a huge piece to this activity and without it, students will not be as successful as some of the other teams who collaborate together.

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The article I read was the 10 benefits of collaborative learning. I chose this picture for 2 reasons. The first reason is that the article talks of all the benefits of working together, and this is a picture of people working together. But the second reason, is that the Red line in the back could be like a student’s collaboration skills or social skills or grades. And the amount of work students have working together could be a representative of whatever increasing the more they collaboratively learn. Collaboration is an important part of learning because of the 10 benefits that were listed in the article, but I think when students are able to work together and bounce ideas off each other is when they can produce their best work. Because sometimes students think of an idea the other students didn’t think of, or they can put their ideas together. In my health classes I try to do a lot of group projects to have the students up walking around and interacting with classmates if they do not use their iPad. Or if they need their iPad, they are using a resource like google slides where they can work on a project together.

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This article is interesting because it shows us (as teachers) how to effectively assign different responsibilities and duties to each student in the classroom. From having classroom jobs like attendance, absentee duties, homework checkers, classroom cleaners, etc..

This article helps teach students responsibility, leadership, independence, and helps other students work together as a team. Thus building stronger relationships amongst the students, and not to mention it makes life easier for the teacher.

As someone who has been out of the classroom for several years, I got some interesting ideas from this and plan to implement into my own classroom this school year.

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Meredith Howard, a history and social studies teacher at Albert Hill Middle School in Richmond, Virginia, sees the many benefits that come from teens taking on classroom jobs. But her initial inspiration was straightforward: "It was simply a time saver and a job saver for me so I can put more of my energy toward actually teaching."

At the beginning of the school year, Howard demonstrates all of the jobs during the first couple of weeks. Then, she asks interested students to apply to one or more jobs, citing their skills that would make them especially successful. Someone in charge of helping absent students, for example, needs to have excellent attendance. She then assigns students to various jobs, which they keep for the entire school year unless they retire (Howard has never had to fire anyone).

Within a few weeks, students conduct their jobs without being asked or reminded. It relieves Howard of administrative tasks, and it promotes a classroom that flows smoothly from one activity to another. Before the bell rings, the Whiteboard Manager updates the whiteboard with that day's agenda, learning targets, and homework. Then, the Attendance Monitor announces the attendance question of the day and counts off. If anyone is absent, the Absent Helper collects that day's handouts and writes the student's name on them.

Though this is more common in preschool and elementary settings, Howard is a big proponent of assigning classroom jobs to older kids and teens. Secondary students are capable of taking initiative, keeping track of tasks, and reporting information accurately. And they take their responsibilities seriously. Beginning early in the school year, their peers begin to rely on them to deliver graded papers, check that they've written down the homework correctly, and sing to them on their birthdays. The result? A classroom culture in which everyone contributes-and everyone takes ownership of their learning.

Responses are generated by artificial intelligence. AI can make mistakes.

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How Classroom Jobs for Teens Instill Responsibility

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When middle and high school students take ownership of tasks in their classroom regularly, they build a culture of teamwork and support.

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The video shows you how to organize your classroom to promote collaborative learning. It's great to say you have collaborative learning in your room, but is your room really designed for it? Are kids sitting in rows of desks? Do they have materials they need to collaborate with other students? This video takes a classroom and redesigns it to make it more ready for students to collaborate. Collaboration helps students communicate and problem solve more effectively. It makes learning more enjoyable, rather than sitting and listening to a teacher lecture for the entire period. Students think at a higher level during collaboration.

I need to make my math lessons more collaborative. I feel our new math program isn't as engaging and collaborative as our previous program. At the end of the school year when I finished the curriculum I incorporated some projects into the last two weeks of school. There was more collaboration with these projects than previous lessons. I enjoyed this more than the lessons I teach. I think the students enjoyed it more too. I would like to work with my PLC to make current math lessons more collaborative.

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Remake Your Class Part 3: Exploring a Collaborative Learning Environment

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This article emphasizes the importance of collaboration, specifically in mathematics at the elementary level. Collaboration in math helps students develop deeper understanding by sharing and discussing different problem-solving strategies. Collaboration in my classroom in my room often looks like small groups (typically 3) students talking through strategies, correct each other (my favorite!), and build on group members’ ideas as they solve complex, open-ended math problems. I am more of a facilitator and when groups are "stuck", I provide thinking questions/hints. This article discusses "Building Thinking Classrooms"- my instructional approach.

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Picture a "traditional" math class and then a "21st-century" math class. One of the most obvious differences is probably how students are interacting: No longer silently sitting in rows of desks, students are talking to each other. They are collaborating.

Collaborative learning promotes higher-level reasoning, self-esteem, and positive relationships at school. To unlock the benefits of collaborative learning for young mathematicians, teachers can plan accessible tasks. When students don't have to devote as much "brain space" to understanding the directions for a task, they can focus instead on collaborating on the math itself. This supports all students, including multilingual students and students with disabilities.

Start with tasks that are engaging, but not content-heavy, so that you can prioritize laying the groundwork for collaboration. Even a task as simple as taking turns drawing a picture can be productive for discussing expectations around sharing work and communicating. From there, you can use the warm-ups, word problems, and manipulatives that you and your students are already familiar with to generate accessible and meaningful collaborative tasks.

1. Collaborate Using Your Warm-Ups

Routines like warm-ups, number sense routines, or number talks invite students to reason and discuss, typically in a whole group setting. However, these can be done collaboratively as well.

Selecting warm-ups for collaboration: Look for routines that have many possible "right" answers, so that all group members will be able to contribute meaningfully. This doesn't have to be multiple numerical answers; it could also be many ways to get to a solution-for example, different ways to see a total in a dot talk. When you do this routine as a whole group, you may find yourself saying to students, "Wow, I hadn't thought of that!" Those activities lend themselves well to collaboration.

Preparing warm-ups for collaboration: In a whole group discussion, you use your learning objectives to steer the conversation as it happens. For example, if we were discussing "Ways to Make 1/8" as a whole class and students were only talking about shapes, I might ask the class to think about a number line. If this discussion were to happen in collaborative groups, that steering needs to be built into the task. One way to do this is with a checklist. For example, when my third graders did "Ways to Make 1/8" as a collaborative task, each group got this checklist:

2 ways to make 1/8 of a square

2 ways to make 1/8 of a rectangle

1 way to make 1/8 of a circle

1 way to make 1/8 on a number line

2 ways to make 1/8 of numbers (example: 1/8 of 16 is 2)

The checklist makes it obvious to students how they should be contributing, and even though I might not be part of every conversation, I know that key points are surfacing throughout the room.

2. Collaborate Using Your Word Problems

Whether writing word problems yourself or using the ones in a curriculum, word problems are a feature of every math class.

Selecting word problems for collaboration: Make sure the context of the chosen word problem is accessible, or plan for making the context accessible. You might use images or videos to make sure students understand the vocabulary and can make connections to background knowledge. If the word problems in your curriculum have instructions like "Use an array model to solve," leave those parts out. Groups should solve in ways that make sense to them, and diversity in strategies both within groups and between groups will lead to important mathematical discussions.

Preparing word problems for collaboration: You can turn one word problem into an extended collaborative task by planning a series of increasingly challenging number sets to fit into the story. For example, "Allison filled up 8 baskets of peaches, with 10 peaches in each basket. How many peaches is that?" followed by 18 baskets of 10, then 18 baskets of 25. If groups are working at vertical surfaces like whiteboards, they can look around the room after finishing one number set to see what number set to work on next, as described by Peter Liljedahl in Building Thinking Classrooms. This promotes knowledge mobility and frees the teacher to discuss with groups as needed.

3. Collaborate Using Your Manipulatives

Preparing counting collections: Students will need "right-sized" collections, tools for organizing, and space to record. Don't be afraid to offer big collections. Collections of, say, 45 for kindergartners or 845 for fourth graders can be meaningful opportunities for developing place value understanding. Tools like cups, plates, paper trays from the cafeteria, and your number lines or hundred charts should be available for students to take up as they need. Finally, think about how you want students to record their collections: on paper, on whiteboards, and/or digitally on a platform like Seesaw.

To grow your collection of collections beyond your classroom manipulatives and supplies, invite students to bring in collections from home, or round up unwanted items around your school. I have many beautiful collections of transparent manipulatives left over from the overhead projector days.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Collaboration is tricky. Even with extensive planning and coaching, students and groups will struggle at times. But if collaboration is hard for your class, that means they need to practice it more, not less. More collaboration doesn't have to mean planning more tasks from scratch; you can and should use the resources you already have and turn those into revisit-able routines. Having familiar routines for collaboration means that students can dive straight into the learning, while continuing to develop their identities as good group-mates who know how to support each other and work together.

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3 Math Tasks You Already Use That Can Foster Collaboration

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Warm-ups, word problems, and manipulatives are great opportunities for elementary students to work together on collaborative math tasks.