Do your discipline issues seem up? Do you ever find yourself wondering if it's because our young people spend more time on screens than they do interacting in-person? And, if that's the case, what are teachers supposed to do about it?
Hampton City Schools has some of the finest teachers around, and they've found ways to help students to learn to communicate and collaborate within the context of their lessons.
What happens when the teacher takes the time to allow students to work together to learn? Hesitant learners often bloom and learning takes place at an even deeper level.
Here are some ideas for how our amazing teachers have motivated our young people by infusing collaboration into every day tasks:
English-Language Arts
Lakesha Pickering, Middle School
Making Connections with Characters and Classmates: Students joined my Nearpod class and posted their responses to the following question on the "Collaborate" board: "How do our experiences affect our actions? In other words, how does our background influence our behavior?" We had a whole class discussion about several of the responses. After taking notes on the “Making Connections” mini-lesson, students responded to the following poll question: "Of the people/ characters from the articles and stories we've read this year, to which one can you relate most? Be prepared to identify the similarities and differences between you and the character!"
We then, as a class, listed some ways students could draw connections between themselves and the characters. They noted that many of the people we've read about are teenagers and concluded that it was intentional on my part. They stated that I wanted to use people/ characters my students would be able to relate to on some level. Next, students completed a Venn-like graphic organizer, comparing and contrasting themselves with the character they'd selected. While they did this, I assigned partners (I paired students with another student who'd identified most with the same character, based on the poll results). The students then worked with their partner to create a Triple-Venn diagram...on the desks! They used dry-erase markers to draw the graphic organizer on the tables, talked about what they had in common with each other and the characters, and they talked about how they were unique. When they were finished, they each filled in the paper copy of Triple-Venn graphic organizer and submitted that for a grade. I walked around as students worked, listening in on their discussions and asking guiding questions and providing opportunities for extension, when necessary.
It was, hands-down, my favorite lesson of the year. Everything went smoothly, and we worked from bell-to-bell. Here are two student responses to the exit slip:
"Three important ideas/things from the lesson today was the word schema which affects how we understand things, Text to text which is comparing different text and seeing similarities and differences, and text to world where you can compare the the things are going on now to the text but, the most important thing I learned today is text-to-self which lets you compare your feelings, emotions, and characteristics to another character and I thought that was really cool."
"Three important things I learned today are that you can have something in common with people who seem so different from you. I also learned that not everyone is different from one another and lastly that I have things in common with other people in my class that I didn't know I had."
Nancy Terrell, Middle School
I provide enrichment activities for a 6th grade language arts class. I plan and prepare literature based Maker-Space activities that allow students an opportunity to work in collaborative groups to solve a problem. The Literature-based Maker Space activities have provided students an extension to their classroom, while working on skills needed for that grade level. One instance was when I shares with students the Robert Frost poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening. Students had to make inferences as to what the promise was that the traveler made. They were then given a challenge to create something to help the Traveler keep his promise. The collaborative project went well as students shared their ideas and came to a decision as to what to build. Two students had conflict on how to proceed, not giving in to the others ideas. This gave us an opportunity to talk about the difficulties of working in a group and how to problem solve to achieve the goal.
Kauanza Wilkins-Royal, Middle School
Reciprocal teaching-As a review for several topics we had recently covered, I split the class up into four groups and gave them a topic to teach. The four topics covered were main idea, narrative structure, conflicts, predictions, and inferences. The students had 10-15 minutes to put together a mini-informational session to include examples. Once time was up they had to present to the class and answer class questions. It went well. Students were apprehensive at first but once they started working together they started enjoying the activity. They were allowed to ask questions which kept them engaged. What worked well was the grouping with having students of different ability levels in the same group. Next time I will provide more of a guide of what is needed from each group.
Melissa Twisdale, Elementary School
It’s easy to think that adding “turn and talk” to the gradual release process should be a quick and easy strategy that kids should be able to do; it’s also easy to stop offering “turn and talk” when it becomes more like “turn and argue.” It may help to break this element down for students, so that skills like decision making are built into the process. Students who typically struggle with peer interactions may find more success by starting with paired interactions before working in cooperative groups. The decision for things like, who goes first may be as simple as a quick game of “rock paper scissors. “. Most recently, as a way to build concepts for the cause and effect comprehension strategy in fourth grade, we used a cause and effect matching activity in a partner reading learning experience. The sort was based on social studies content with the cause and effect events for Jamestown listed side by side. The cause and effect events were mixed up so the buddies took turns reading the cause and effect events while collaborating to correctly match the “when-then” events.
Mathematics
Aimee Foshee, Elementary School
Students had to work together to create shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks. Students used the toothpicks for sides and the marshmallows for the vertices. Students had to cooperate with their partner in order to assemble the shapes because otherwise they fell apart. Students had to collaborate together to decide how many toothpicks and marshmallows they need to ask me for in order to create the given shape. The project went very well. The students enjoyed creating the shapes and they worked well together. The only thing I may change is use something not a food item like playdough so I can display the item outside the classroom.
Katelyn Harlan, Middle School
My co-teacher and I created groupings to remediate on area and perimeter. We had at least one strong leader per group, for those groups we were not working with. Students had to complete all of the activities in sequence, but only one paper from each group for each activity would be graded. It was important that all students understood the material and kept each other on task.
Social Studies
Annette Crothers, Elementary
The students have to learn the economic terms of Colonial Virginia (barter, credit, debt, and savings). To help the students not only learn the terms, but also apply them, they created skits to act out the meaning of the words. I divided the students into groups of three. I gave them one of the terms, but they were not allowed to share it with other groups. I assigned a different role to each group member (props, writer, timer). Even though they had individual roles, all members were expected to participate in the creation and performance of the skit. The students worked for 25 minutes on creating their script and props. When time was up, they performed in front of the class. When they were finished, their classmates had to guess which economic term they had based on the hints given during their performance.
The activity went GREAT! The students were extremely focused and engaged during their preparation time. I was honestly surprised by how excited they were. I realized that they don't receive many opportunities to share what they know in performance-based activities. I think that assigning roles worked well because students all felt responsible for the performance, which made them more invested in making the final product turn out well. Next time, I would give the students more time to work on their skits. I might stretch the activity over two days because while the skits were fantastic, the finished products took less than one minute to perform. Extending the activity will give the students more time to add artistic details and rehearse.
Music
Wanda Mitchell, Electronic Music Technology (High School)
Students worked in small groups taking on the roles of producer, composer, lyricist, and arranger to brainstorm ideas for a song. They choose the style, the instrumentation and co-wrote the lyrics. They completed a self-assessment and presented their final project with the class, who then gave them constructive feedback. It was very well received. Those students who normally would complain about completing the assignment, feeling they are inadequate, were partnered with more confident students. This helped to boost their self-confidence.
Art
Anonymous, High School
Quizlet Live: Students get placed into random groups for an online game using vocabulary and it forces them to communicate because no two people in a group have the same answer options on their screens and they have to sequentially get correct answers or fall behind in the "race" (kind of like Kahoot for teams).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting! We love comments!