Benefits of student collaboration in the classroom

Apart from the fact that many of our syllabi require that we teach the skill of effective student collaboration, there are so many benefits for students if this is promoted regularly in a classroom setting.

Some of these benefits include: 

• Building communication skills
• Learning to navigate various personalities
• Improving peer relationships and respect
• Increased retention of knowledge
• Promoting critical thinking, problem solving and patience
• Learn how to take on different roles in a group
• Develops leadership skills

Knowing this, how can we build student skills in collaboration? How can we do this quickly and effectively in the classroom?

The art of using teacher questioning to build student collaboration skills is a worthwhile strategy to use as it is easily embedded into a normal lesson.

3 ways to build student collaboration using teacher questioning

Teacher questioning is the classic ‘go to’ activity to get lessons started and involves asking students questions to check for understanding. Teachers use questioning at this point in the lesson to remind the class of the learning done so far and they use the data from the responses to set the pace and depth of the rest of the lesson.

Tweaking the normal questioning routine with a few simple additions also promotes the development of student collaboration learning attributes.

1. Question – pair share – response

How to conduct a pair share response:

1. Ask your question
2. Allow 30 seconds for students to pair share 
3. Elicit responses

Every student is involved in the thinking time and engages with the question. In this dynamic, students are using their strengths to share ideas and actively participate in learning from others.

After 30 seconds most students will feel confident to respond in front of the class as the risks of getting it wrong have been reduced.

2. Mini whiteboard hovering

How to use mini whiteboard hovering:

1. Ask your question
2. Students respond by writing their response on mini whiteboards 
3. Student hover the mini whiteboards with writing side down in front of them
4. After everyone has written a response and has their whiteboard hovering, students reveal responses by flipping their whiteboard up.

Every student is engaged with thinking about the question and has to commit to a response.

They practise the learning habit sharing their knowledge in a group setting and taking risks.

The teacher collects data from the whole class to inform groupings for the rest of the lesson and to highlight where learning interventions might be needed.

This technique also allows students to notice that we all need time to think and retrieve information before responding.

3. Brain Book Buddy

How to use the ‘brain book buddy’ strategy:

1. Ask a more complex question 
2. Give students 2 minutes of silence to retrieve information from their brain
3. Then allow 2 minutes of silence to use information from their book
4. Then allow 2 minutes of buddy time to discuss the best response
5. Elicit responses from several different groups

Having given students time to think about the problem and then boost the quality of the response with their own notes, students are encouraged to co-construct the best response by working as a team.

In the discussion of the best response, students will bring their ideas and simultaneously support others whose responses lacked clarity or depth.

Conclusion

Each of these strategies are so easily embedded into any lesson with little to no preparation required. Using these strategies will enrich your students’ learning experience and help to build student collaboration. 

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common teacher fears

New Science Teacher Advice

The ‘see-think-wonder’ methodology

 The see-think-wonder method was developed as part of Harvard’s Project Zero research into thinking routines and the development of scaffolds to support student thinking. This is often referred to as ‘Visible Thinking’. The aim of this research was to guide students through their thinking practices by making thinking visible. These routines are applicable across all subject areas and grade levels.

What is the ‘see-think-wonder’ method?

The see-think-wonder method stimulates student curiosity by encouraging them to make interpretations based on observation. The routine involves having students complete the following stems: ‘I see…, I think…, I wonder…’

The SEE phase in the see-think-wonder method encourages noticing without judgement, sitting with ‘not knowing’ for a while. It encourages exploration of all the data – the colours, the numbers, the words, the patterns.

Pointing out what you have seen is low risk and allows participation by all students, regardless of whether they understand what the data is representing, or maybe even how it ties into the learning intention.

As a teacher it is important to model the thinking routine so I might contribute “I see that the scale for time is logarithmic” or “I see some drops in % survival of large mammals occurs over 2 steps”. Reporting back from small groups could focus on novel noticings that only one person saw so that you don’t use up too much time hearing about the obvious.

The THINK phase in the see-think-wonder method encourages some interpretation and students start to make claims about the data before them. “I think that humans caused large mammals to become extinct” or “I think African mammals were less impacted by human arrival than mammals on other land masses” or “I think there are fewer large mammals alive today”.

Students can be prompted to state the evidence behind their claim if teachers use “What makes you say that?” in a way that shows a curiosity about their claim rather than a judgement of it.

As students WONDER, they may start with simple questions related to unknowns in the image. “I wonder what H.sapiens means” or “I wonder what log kYA is.” This type of low level inquiry question is important for understanding and shouldn’t be dismissed.

However, class discussion following on from having shared the THINK ideas should lead into broader questions that push beyond simple interpretations and start looking at issues, ideas and connections within and beyond the data set. These might include questions for reasoning where students wonder about how the data was generated. “I wonder how this data was collected” or “I wonder how many species are represented by the percentages on the y-axis.”

Scientific questions about the validity of the data are relevant and welcomed: “I wonder how reliable the fossil record is” and questions about the connections between this and other information allow students to make links and bring new information into their personal mind map: “I wonder if climate change might have had an impact on large mammal survival”. These will engage students with new areas to explore as they move through this topic.

Using the ‘See-Think-Wonder’ in 4 steps

What to do:

1. Give out an interesting graphic, individually, in pairs or displayed on a large screen (maybe with the lights dimmed)
2. 5 minutes (in silence): “What do you SEE? What does this make you THINK? And what does it make you WONDER?”.
3. 5 minutes: Students share in small groups
4. 5 minutes: Class discussion with “What makes you say that?”

Conclusion

Using this simple see-think-wonder visible thinking routine for 10 to 15 minutes has promoted engagement, thinking and questioning skills in a way that gives meaning, purpose and authenticity to the learning intention and topics being studied.

Will you try this with your class?

Comment below!