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Collaborative guidelines for connecting formal & informal learning

Activity 1

. Be the teacher, you wanted to have, when you were a student.
. Always remember that the same way you have been marked by your teachers, it will happen to your students, so be a very good memory for your students life.
. Be the best teacher to your students: listen, smile, guide.

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Yes, I can!
I have completed my course at 15-02-2019.

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Do these results surprise you? Also taking into account all the information you took in during this course, how could you adapt your teaching to better accommodate your students’ learning interests?

I wasn't too surprised, because my students are always the first to "twist their noses" when I propose some group work. They always try to manipulate the groups, the work theme, the delivery time and the work procedures.
There are works, which after the sulking, go very well and the students are very proud of their final product, but there are also works that become a real plea for everyone.
At this moment, I always listen to my students. When I propose a work, I always ask who wants to work in a group. There are always 4 or 5 students who prefer to work alone and sometimes for very valid reasons.
I have been careful to use digital tools to be able to follow the students' work and this allows both, those who work in groups and those who work alone to feel comfortable and accompanied throughout their work.

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Student collaboration outside the classroom

Activity 2
Have you tried out other useful apps or resources?
I really like using Glogster program. It makes very cute and interactive class presentations and students also use this program to present their work.
The Glogster EDU educational program was created based on the growing popularity of the Glogster program. Glogster EDU is a Web 2.0 platform that allows you to create interactive virtual posters and upload videos, music, sounds, images, text, data attachments, special effects, animations and links. Drawing tools are also an integral part of the platform.

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house: house | Glogster EDU - Interactive multimedia posters

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See the Glog! house: house | Glogster EDU - Interactive multimedia posters

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Student collaboration outside the classroom

Activity 1
Having watched the example from Austria, can you think of other examples of collaborative learning outside of the classroom?

Unfortunately, in Portugal, students cannot leave school without parental and school permission and must always be accompanied by school adults, i.e. teachers or education assistants. If the activity is not included in the annual plan of activities, it cannot take place and if the teacher tries to do it by his own, the teacher knows and assumes that if something goes wrong, the teacher will always be responsible. So we are left with only the classes within the school grounds and the study visits.
That's how I took advantage of a field trip to London to get my students to do fieldwork. The class was divided into groups and each group was responsible for each topic of the visit to London.
One group prepared work on the most famous museums and places in the city that we would be obliged to visit.
Another group prepared a work about food. What we should eat, what would be traditional to eat and drink on a trip to the city of London.
Another group prepared the itinerary from the departure from Lisbon airport to the return, including mandatory stops, how long we should stay there, what kind of transport we should use, and they also chose accommodation in London.
Another group was responsible for the type of clothes and shoes that we should wear and the weather conditions that we would find during that week. They were also responsible for the money, what currency is used in London, how much money we should take, in estimation, to spend for a week.
Let's just say that the visit to London went very well and that I had never seen the students engage so much in an activity.

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Assessment of collaborative learning

Activity 2
How would you assess student learning in projects that provide students with opportunities for informal and non-formal learning?

Generally, when there is an opportunity to develop work that allows informal and non-formal learning, I like to use digital resources such as Kahoot or the Liveworksheets platform as an element of assessment.
Skills that are developed in an informal environment mark students more than those that are developed in a formal classroom environment.
In an informal environment, one's skills are reinforced, the use of emotional intelligence is further developed and interpersonal relationships are strengthened; group spirit is strengthened and soft skills can be observed and recorded in an observation grid.
When the students finally present their work to other classes and teachers, the result is the final record of their learning, because in order to reach the last stage the enjoyment and commitment of these students was verified.

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Assessment of collaborative learning

Activity 1

Rubrics and checklists

Yes, I use, whenever possible, checklists and rubrics for all my students' work and evaluations.
I think they are extremely important, because at the end of the work it is possible to follow the whole learning process of the students, their difficulties, their preferences...
I have once involved students in the construction of an observation grid for group work and what I observed was that students tend to be very observant of details and tend to create more rigid assessment descriptors.
I use this rubric when my students must prepare their oral productions. In this case, they should talk about themselves. It's in Portuguese.

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Elements of effective collaborative work
Answering each one of the topics about Phil Spoors' questions, I think that collaborative learning effectively helps students learn more than if they did it individually, because when the teacher proposes to work for his students, he already knows in advance, how to help form the working groups and how the work can be more productive. The teacher knows that in that particular working group, there are elements that will explore the topic, others will analyse the topic in various ways, others will find the best way to present the work to colleagues and the teacher. Everyone will work for the best learning. Everyone will be involved in a task and the need to present the work will certainly develop the thinking of all the students involved.
Collaborative learning requires greater preparation by the teacher when indicating group work.

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Your “Bridge the Learning Scenario” (step 2)

Activity 1

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Collaboration for personalised learning
I see collaborative learning as a personalized learning strategy.
There is always a link between collaborative learning and personalized learning approaches. When students work collaboratively they have to talk to each other and help each other, they must not forget their colleagues who work with them and so are learning and participating in a personalised way, strengthening the group and the other students.
Students adapt the rhythm to the group members after being given a checklist and deadlines and can work as they wish.
Collaborative and personalized learning can really go hand in hand. In the video, we can see this link when the teacher explains that he or she can direct different qualified students in a small group of 4 students. He can direct both, the most qualified and the least qualified students, who would otherwise lose concentration in a normal class.
Students help each other and support each other. They have to seek each other's understanding, solutions or meanings, or create a product and will only be able to do so if they collaborate.

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Collaborative learning in a flexible classroom

Unfortunately, the learning spaces available to my students are completely obsolete compared to Steve's classroom.
For some time now I have been doing training on these new themes, such as collaborative learning, project work, pedagogical differentiation, and in all training I hear and see the same:
- We have to change!
I am filled with energy and motivation to create a more motivating and welcoming space for my students. But then,
I arrive at school and run into everything that is bureaucracy or problem. The school is too old, there are few classrooms or room for anything. Everything fails, the classrooms with old and broken tables and chairs, the windows, some that don't open, others that don't have blinds, old paintings, video projectors that don't work, internet too slow that doesn't even allow me to open the platform of my book publisher, equipped with beautiful activities that I can't use in the classroom, classmates who are very unwilling for a teacher to try to change the layout of the classroom, educational assistants who pretend not to see garbage piling up in the corners of classrooms and an endless array of other situations.
I continue to say that change must begin in our government. If there is no investment in schools, education becomes increasingly impoverished.
How can anyone be happy to know that I, a simple English teacher, can bring some curtains from home, some painted boxes to file material, ask for some paint cans to paint a classroom? And to do this, I'll have to get permission from the Headmaster and paint the room after hours, and beside that I am sure that the room I have paited it's not going to be my room.
No one is willing to mend it anymore!
Do I want to change? Of course I do. It's up to all of us to ensure a change of mentality.

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Collaborative learning to build deeper understanding

Activity 2
I usually prefer small groups. Sometimes students can devide into groups themselves, sometimes I organize groups using diferent criteria (interests, experience, etc) and sometimes I organize groups of mixed abilities students.

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Collaborative learning to build deeper understanding

Activity 1
I usually divide students in small groups, distributing tasks among them and I think that is essential to provide them some guidelines in order to have ideas of what we are working with.

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Collaborative learning through project-based learning
I have never been involved in such a well-structured project for a number of reasons beyond my control. Portuguese schools, particularly in the Sintra area, are not prepared for this type of work. They are very old and degraded schools with no space and no technological conditions.
However, I really like to get my students to work in small groups, whenever possible.
A few years ago, I involved my classes in a project work about foods and drinks.
The students were divided into groups and each one was responsible for addressing a topic, for example, there were the vegetable groups, the fruit group, etc.
The cafeteria was decorated with the students work and everyone was invited to lunch, including parents, parish council president, firemen and police.

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Why collaborative learning

Why do you enjoy group work?Because it helps students to develop skills like planning, listening to other's opinions, sharing responsibilities.
It is an excellent way to develop social skills and values.
It is an opportunity to incorporate formal, informal and non-formal learning.
What group work do you already implement with your students?
My students work in groups to solve worksheets about grammar contents, and to revise some contents to the other groups.
What would you like to achieve next?
More tools to implement collaborative work and to evaluate it.
Classrooms with modular desks that are more suited to group work.

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What do you understand collaborative learning to mean?

Collaborative learning is a resource in the area of education, which results from the need to insert interactive methodologies between the student, or user, together with the teacher to establish searches, understanding and interpretation of information on specific issues.
in: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aprendizagem_colaborativa

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Bridge the learning scenario

Topic: Tutoring for difficult students
Description: a group of students will be envolved in a PBL about how to help problematic students to integrate into school and society.
Collaborative work: All the class teachers, the school psychologist, parents and older students get togehter to listen and help students with problems.

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Is your classroom set up to be flexible and interactive, like the one shown in the video? Share a photo, drawing, sketch or description of your working spaces here, and then vote for the two submissions that you find most inspiring!

Oh, my God!
My school doesn't have enough space, there are few classrooms for the student population, there's no technological equipment to differentiate learning or allow more autonomy to the students. Compared to the video school, I can say with all certainty that we are very behind with other countries and that the Portuguese government should urgently invest in the education of its society.

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Tools for personalised learning

Ask3
This app for the iPad allows students and teachers to collaborate on lessons both in and outside of the classroom. Questions can be posted to specific classrooms set up in the app, and students can add their thoughts, answers, and thinking to the whiteboard. - See more at: https://www.nwea.org/blog/2014/33-digital-tools-advancing-formative-assessment-classroom/#sthash.TXT4yE6b.dpuf

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Fostering student agency (more autonomy in learning)

I believe that nowadays the teacher must be the action leader inside class. The teacher must facilitate learning to create active learners.

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Identify some criteria for effective personalised learning

When I think in personalised learning, there are some issues that cross my mind, such as:
- know your students;
- create a friendly classroom enviroment;
- different teaching methods;
- peer learning;
- cooperative learning;
- Pedagogical Differentiation;
- Multiple inteligences;
- Learning styles;
- ...

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What do you know about your students’ interests and learning preferences?
Now we would like you to consider: How could you collect this information more systematically and make better use of it to support your students’ learning? And how do you assess your students’ learning throughout the whole process?

I am always very interested about my students preferences. When school starts in September, I usually spend two or three lessons to talk with each one in order to understand who they are and what do they like.
I use my notebook to note their main characteristics and by the end of the schoolyear I have good and enough information about each one of them. When my students want to read about themselves they can borrow my notes.
I use formative assessment, oral productions, writing, quizzes, padlets, roleplays, songs... but my favourite (and my students!) is liveworksheets plataform. I really do recommend this plataform. Students like to do their evaluation because when they finish the ws or the evaluation test they know their evaluation immediately.
I also have a blog where my students can find what they need to learn in my class.

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S. Valentine. Mostrar todas as mensagens

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Imagine that you have to personalise a learning task with two activities for two kinds of learners (high-skilled and low-skilled learners). What would you do?
After assessing students level (performance, interests and learning profiles) I would use Bloom's Taxonomy and the Multiple Intelligences with an Integrating Matrix.
With this kind of matrix, all students are included in class, the high-skilled and the low-skilled learners.

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Write down 3 more learning goals for this module

Listen to my students carefully

Get closer to the most unmotivated  students

Try to understand what kind of work students actually prefer, inside class.

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Share the story of one student who struggled to get good grades, but succeeded in another field? How did you / could you help the student?

Last year I had a student that came from Africa.
He was so shy. He never opened his mouth in my English clas.
I couldn't find out what was his problem.
On the second term, after the first evaluation test, I was shocked with his negative feedback.
I spoke with him and told him that if he wanted to talk with me about anything, he could count on me.
A few days later he asked to talk to me and he told me that never in his life had english classes.
He asked for help and each week after his classes he started meeting with me as a tutor.
His hardworking gave good results and today he is on the 7th grade. I still am his proud tutor teacher.

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Strategies to empower students in their formal & informal learning

Despite the willingness to change laws with great ideas to change the actual school settings, something does not fit right. I agree with Diana Rhoten, when she says that the way schools are structured creates a barrier to innovation in learning.
However, despite this great obstacle to inovate schools, teachers are changing and changing their classrooms in order to achieve their students sucess.
Day by day they are introducing interactive worksheets, smart boards, tablets and Ipads, mobile phones with lots of different teaching apps.
I am trying so much to be one of those teachers!
Students must be engaged and committed to the task. They must control their learning process and then I will feel like a good teacher because my students will succeed in their education ... and life.

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Linking non-formal/ informal learning & formal learning

We are always learning!
Our knowledge grows with the interactions that we are constantly making with our formal, non-formal and informal learnings.
Nowadays, I think that we teachers are "softly killing" the meaning (and joy) of the word SCHOOL with our tradicional and formal education.
Today, knowledge is everywhere and it is really fast (a click away). I can search for any subject/ topic in my comfortable couch or my bed.
Students are feeling very bored inside classes.
It is urgent that there must be evolution in the concept of SCHOOL and TEACHER.
We are living a global word and society has changed, our students are changed. So, therefore, we must hurry up and create a new concept of school where formal, non-formal and informal learning must be naturally linked.

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What is formal/ non formal/ informal learning

Give an example of how you learned something in a formal setting
I took the yoga and meditation course to teach my students in class.

Give an example of how you learned something in a non-formal setting
I had an online course to learn how to cook Italian food.

Give an example of how you learned something in an informal setting
When I travel and visit famous monuments, libraries, restaurants ...

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What are your own students' interests and learning preferences?

For the first time, after 24 years of teaching in so many different schools around Portugal I can say, for sure, that I don't understand my students interests. Why? Because I realized that THEY don't have a little idea of what is important for them.
If we play a game inside class it's a battle field, if we do some kind of activities with computers, Ipads, they don't give any kind of importance to the activity.
Singing, watching videos, films, going out for a field trip ... it´s always boring for them!!!
I am always asking them: what do you like? What makes you laugh? Who do you admire?
What's your hobby?
And in most of the times, I hear: I don't know!
Most of them are always playing videogames with their cell phones, competing with each other. My students are 10-12 years old and from day to day I feel them more agressive with everyone inside school.
So, dear colleagues, I'm feeling so lost this year.
I need you ideas and your advices

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Let's get started

Hello!
I'm Maria Afonso, an English teacher in Rio de Mouro, Sintra.
I love teaching but at the moment I'm feeling very disappointed with School. So ... I want to learn with all of you how to motivate students in class and help those who have problems with English, other subjects, school, teachers, parents and society.
I need your help to continue feeling "Yes, I can" be a better teacher.
It is a pleasure to be here and I'm sure I will learn a lot with all of you.