3 Great Ways to Practice Collaboration in the Classroom
by Amy Bowker
March 31, 2022
Collaboration in the classroom is an essential part of learning. I find it is a hard thing to figure out how to teach. Here are some things I’m doing in my classroom that promote collaboration.
Puzzles
I recently have introduced a puzzle table to my classroom. The instant joy and play for the students were so exciting to see. Some students immediately started strategizing and as others would come to the table, they would communicate the plan. I found it fun to work together with students on something not school-related. One student finally clicked a piece into place and say ” that is so satisfying.”
Building puzzles is believed to help strengthen visual acuity, build short term memory, develop problem solving skills, increase fine motor skills and it may be therapeutic.
The Health Benefits of Puzzle Building http://www.thealternativedaily.com/health-benefits-puzzle-building/
STEM Challenges
Every Friday my students have STEM challenges. This helps them problem solve and learn to work together. Sometimes the challenges go so badly that we re-do them the next week. This provides them with an opportunity to think about what went badly and fix it the second time. Don’t we all want a re-do? I find that at the beginning of the school year, the collaboration is pretty terrible. No one listens to each other and they mostly work on their own. As the year progresses, the students learn to communicate and collaborate and they make up some pretty awesome things. I find even when they would on individual items they end up collaborating together anyway and helping each other throughout the project or challenge.
Thinking Classroom
Everything about Thinking Classroom by Peter Liljedahl is about collaboration. You start by giving the class an engaging math task and then divide the students up into visibility random groupings. By having visibility random groupings for the students daily, all the students get to know each other quickly. This immediately makes students feel more comfortable in the classroom because they have relationships with each and every other person in the class. Then the students work on solving the math task given while there is only one marker to use so students need to communicate and collaborate to solve the problem. When completed students can work together to solve their check for understanding questions.
After a little while of working in groups, as a class, you determine what works and doesn’t work as a group and you define exactly what good collaboration looks like. It is a slow progression to build the skills of collaboration. Every week or so, I assess each individual student on how they are working as a collaborator and they can reflect on how to be better as a group member.
How do you teach or practice collaboration in the classroom?
