Blogpost Homework: Collaboration

Blogpost Homework: Collaboration

In his article, Collaboration and High-Quality Student Work, Brengard describes how collaboration is essential to student success and an integral part of his school's mission. He states that Constructive Collaboration is the goal and requires students to take responsibilty for themselves and teammates. They listen to each other with understanding, kindness, and empathy. They commit to shared success. This type of collaboration is essential to learn early in life as it prepares children for life after graduation, when collaboration becomes part of their daily life at work and in all relationships. 

In his article, Easing the Pain of Student Collaboration, Paul Curtis describes the importance of student collaboration and how as students get older, particularly middle and high school, teachers spend less time teaching this crucial skill. He suggests team contracts as one approach to meet this challenge. He lays out specific components for creating these contracts. He also cautions teachers to actually teach collaboration, value diversity, balance group work with individual work and benchmark and tracking to hold groups accountable.

The rubrics for kindergarten will be very useful for me this year as I continue on my PBL journey. BIE's rubric contains the essential elements for collaboration in early childhood and is written in a way that is child friendly. I can discuss the rubric with students and they can see how they are performing based on the number of smiley faces they receive. I love that there are not any frowns or other negative faces. 

The group I have this year is overall a respectful and kind group of children. They listen to one another and always compliment one another. I would like to boost their confidence and teach them to encourage each other to share ideas. They tend to look to certain children for ideas and direction while working collaboratively, rather than each child contributing an equal amount in ideas and information. 

The most important components in working collaboratively in any grade level are communication, collective responsibility, and community. When a classroom has a sense of community, I believe empathy and respect naturally follow. Collaborative work is only successful when students feel comfortable and understand that they each share an equal amount of responsibility in their groups. Students must also be able to communicate their ideas effectively, as well as give and receive feedback.