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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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! 

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!

• 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.

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.

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.