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Module 4 Teacher's collaboration - My notes

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Module 4 Teacher's collaboration - My notes

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I love what Prof. Dempsey is saying: " So, it is around changing mindsets, but I think for you to change your mindset, you have to see a value in what you are doing. " and she " , we are preaching one thing and practising another thing."

" if the parents and the students see that the principals and the teachers are working collaboratively, I think that that will have a big impact on how the students work, "

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What point did you like most?
Did you find something different?
What would you keep from their presentation?

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Did you devise a plan before starting to work?
What difficulties did you experience and you didn't expect?
Is there something you would change if you could start from the beginning?

Assessment factors
- individual performance
- group performance
- the group's functionality

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CONCLUSION
This rubric made me think better and discover that no shared responsibility was taken by students during that learning activity. I will use this rubric for every collaborative activity I will design in the future because is the easiest and the best way to be sure that collaboration is taking place in my class. Without these tools I can be wrong so easily.

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FIRST LEARNING ACTIVITY
Are students required to work in pairs or groups? YES
Students have shared responsability?
NO.

CODE 2

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FIRST LEARNING ACTIVITY
Are students required to work in pairs or groups? YES
Students have shared responsability?
YES. They developed a COMMON PRODUCT and they collectively own the work.
Are they making substantive decisions together?
YES, they made substantive decisions about the PROCESS (they decided their roles and responsibilities in the team) and the PRODUCT.
Is their work interdependent?
YES.

CODE 5

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Hi, everyone! My name is Alexandra Fejer and I live in Romania. I love music, reading, teaching and travelling.

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I'm primary teacher in School No. 14 in Brasov, Transilvania, Romania. It is a public school and this year I teach 6 years old students. I have 33 students in my classroom. In our teaching system, every teacher takes a 6 years old class of students and moves with the same class every year in the next grade. So we have the opportunity to became very close to our student's families, to know them better and to see their progress in 5 years.
I have one laptop with internet connection, one video-projector and one whiteboard in my classroom and we are saying that we are lucky to have all these (comparing with other schools in the city).

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Modul 2 - My notes. 4 questions about Collaboration

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Modul 2 - My notes. 4 questions about Collaboration

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1. Are they working together?
- the activity requires them to work in pairs of groups to DISCUSS an issue, SOLVE a problem, CREATE a product

2. Do they have share responsibility?
- when they WORK IN PAIRS OR GROUP to DEVELOP A COMMON product, COMMON design, common response
- learners must collectively own the work
- mutually responsible for its outcome (result): when you ask them to write a poem, this is not collaborative learning because the final produce (poem) has teacher's feedback (it's not exculsively student's work)

3. Do they make substantive decisions?
- important issue about the CONTENT, PROCESS OR PRODUCT (just one of these)
- CONTENT: students must use their knowledges of an issue to make a decision that affects the academic content of their work together, such as taking a stance on a topic they will then write about, or decidding on the hypothesis they will test
- PROCESS: students must plan what they will do, when to do it, what tools they will use or the roles and responsibilities of people on the team
- PRODUCT: students must make fundamental design decisions that affect the nature and usability of their product

4. Is their work interdependent?

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Module 1 - My notes. Online tools in teaching.

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Module 1 - My notes. Online tools in teaching.

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- Scrumy - organise + manage projects
- teacherstools.com
- Randall's lab
- Droptask - like Scrumy
- Class Dojo - instant feedbak to students
- rubistar.4teachers.org
- prezi

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Learning activity which required HIGH LEVEL OF COLLABORATION
Two years ago, with my 3th graders (9 years old students) I've implemented an innovative program developed by Junior Achievement Romania. "Our community" module it's a learning-by-doing program which develop and improve student's entrepreneurial skills.
One of my favorite activity, in my opinion the one who required high level of collaboration, was "Design your perfect community" (children already learned about "what is a community").
They worked in groups (4-5 members).
They had to discuss about what is important to have in their community, what their community need, what is the name of the community, what institutions, buildings, businesses the want to be there.
Then, they chose a name for the community and started to design their community on posters. They draw buildings, houses, malls, schools, hospitals, streets, trying to create an image of their vision about community. Some of them chose beautiful and meaningful names: Friendship's community, Learner's community, Community of happiness etc.
I think this activity required a high level of collaboration because the community's design has to show the vision of the whole group, not individual one. They had to negotiate all the ideas and make the best decision according to the general idea of the community and according with the name they chose.
They had to set concrete responsibilities in the group and each of them had to do their part. So, I think it was a moment when their leaderships skills and team working skills were really developed.
They felt like their dreams were coming true, so they were really engaged in this activity. Because the time was to short (2 hours), they discussed in the group and they decided to come at the school after lunch to finish their work. Then, they asked me to allow them enter in the classroom in the afternoon and I was so happy. I was there with them for all the afternoon and we just observed them working.
On the next day, they had to present their project. They present in front of the classroom the group's vision about a perfect community. They had to listen every project and assess their work. So, in this activity, their presentation and listening skills were requested.

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Learning activity which required LOW LEVEL OF COLLABORATION
On a math class, we've learned about perimeter and area. To exercise their knowledges, we had a game named "Capture your island".
In pairs, they had to extract a bill. They read the coordinates written on the bill, then draw according to them the proper shape. They had to calculate the area of their island and, at the end, to calculate the sum of their islands to establish which of them conquered the larger surface.
I wanted to be a collaborative activity: an opportunity for every child to learn from the peers how to calculate the area of a geometric shape, to feel free to ask help when they don't know, an opportunity for those who understood better to teach the others etc. But, in reality, some groups turned everything in a competition: children wanted to conquer more, they were happy for the colleague's mistakes, the ones who knew better didn't teach anything to the ones who didn't understoond. It was no collaboration for the same goal, they didn't learned together, they just played together and in a play one is the winner and one is the looser. It was engagement, but for a different purpose: to win.
As I said, I think this activity required a low level of collaboration because in some groups the game became competition. Some of the groups had a collaborative activity, understanding that the goal is not to win, but to learn and explain each other.