Stop! Collaborate and Listen!

If these words make you want to start chanting  “Ice Ice Baby”  then you probably had a great time during the ‘90’s. It is interesting to note that this song is (arguably) credited for putting Hip-Hop onto the mainstream billboard charts. Vanilla Ice goes on to sing about how a new idea he has had is changing life as he knows it - I’m fairly sure he is singing about the DJ lifestyle in Florida, however, the main idea of ‘Stop - Collaborate - Listen’ has, for me, changed teaching as I knew it. Group work used to give me anxiety  - I didn’t like participating in it and I struggled to let students engage in it … And then AVID came along and it changed the way I approach teaching!

Here's how:

• STOP.

I had to learn to stop being in control. I had to STOP being the keeper of knowledge and acknowledge that students learn best when engaging with each other. I had to throw away the old “chalk and talk” structure and STOP telling students what to learn, and instead, show them how to learn.

Letting go was hard - especially for someone who likes to feel structured and organised. I like things planned; I want a beginning and an end; I like to tick boxes, account for syllabus dot points and process through things in a neat and organised manner.  I thought I knew what learning looked like in a classroom:

• All students looking to the front of the room, at me.
• All students writing in their books
• All students are quietly working

To me, all these meant we were having a great lesson. Oh, how I’ve changed and it was my introduction to  AVID that changed this for me. As I’ve written about before, AVID works around the WICOR planning strategy and the ‘C’ in WICOR stands for Collaboration. A key feature of almost every one of my lessons now is collaboration but before I could see the benefits, I had to STOP feeling the need to control every aspect of the classroom.

• COLLABORATE.

Through the AVID process, I learned that letting go of total control in the classroom did not mean laissez-faire. Collaborative learning involves intentionally designed student groups engaged in “co-laboring” toward meaningful learning outcomes, using active engagement activities planned to maximise learning, and facilitating the sharing of the workload. I came to realise that for collaboration to have purpose and be successful, I still needed to control aspects of the learning process. I found students needed scaffolds and support within the activities and groups. This meant that planning and developing resources were needed, and instead of controlling a lesson from inside the classroom, I was controlling a lesson through the planning process, from outside the classroom. AVID’s high engagement learning strategies involve collaborative activities through which individual students help each other learn, thereby strengthen their own learning. Students are responsible for their own learning; teachers serve as facilitators in a learning community working together for the success of the group. Of course, the type of planning or the amount of planning, depends on the purpose of the collaborative activity. I definitely plan a specific inquiry question that blends well with collaboration so that students know what it is they are setting out to achieve. At times, I plan which students work best together. I plan prior reading activities; I plan scaffolds to help students work through various aspects of collaboration. And, I think the most important plan, is developing common language that student understand within collaboration.

• LISTEN.

A collaborative classroom is a noisy classroom - but if you have planned the process and given the students a structured scaffold of some kind, you will hear lots of discussion and lots of learning. Sometimes, a quiet classroom may mean that the students are simply disinterested in what is going on. We all know how boring it can be and how disengaged we can become when someone talks at you for an hour, where you are not allowed to talk or discuss or address issues around the topic being presented. Students spend a major portion of their day listening to teachers - no wonder they can’t take anything else in. Collaborative learning flips this around and allows students to do the talking and teachers to do the listening. I was able to spend time with each of the collaboration groups - this not only helped to build a rapport with the students, but it encouraged students to participate as well. If they can see that you are engaged, they are more likely to engage. I am able to LISTEN to what it is my students are saying - assess what it is they have learned, consider what they may have missed, support their learning by asking further questions. I am surprised on a regular basis, - sometimes good, sometimes not so good - by what I learn about my teaching from what I hear when I LISTEN to what, and how, students are learning.

It takes time to prepare purposeful and successful collaboration - students will not be good at  it straight away - I was not good at it straight away! Good collaborative skills needed to be developed. I needed to give time for confidence to build in individual students and trust to develop within the class and between the groups and sometimes, I needed to do the same collaborative strategy more than once so that students felt comfortable completing and/or participating in the activity. But the introduction of collaboration into my classroom as been worth it - there have been so many benefits that I have observed - I think Vanilla Ice would be proud of these observations. (Followed by my Top 5 Collaborative Activities)

20 Benefits I have observed from a Collaborative Classroom

1. Develops higher level thinking skills
2. Promotes student-teacher interaction and familiarity
3. Builds self esteem in students
4. Promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter
5. Develops oral communication skills
6. Develops social interaction skills
7. Creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning
8. Uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability
9. Encourages student responsibility for learning
10. Enhances self management skills
11. Encourages alternate student assessment techniques
12. Fosters and develops interpersonal relationships
13. Modelling problem solving techniques by students' peers
14. Students are taught how to criticise ideas, not people
15. Sets high expectations for students and teachers
16. Students stay on task more and are less disruptive
17. Addresses learning style differences among students
18. Classroom resembles real life social and employment situations
19. Collaboration processes create environments where students can practice building leadership skills.
20. Collaboration increases leadership skills of female students

My Top 5 Collaboration Activities.

• SNOWBALL - a quick and easy activity that encourages collaboration by sharing information about a topic. Students write some kind of information about a topic they are learning about onto a piece of paper. They then crumble the paper. The student’s throw their paper around the room, resembling a snowball fight. I usually play music while this is happening and when the music stops, the students need to collect one of the snowball papers. They read what another student has written about the topic. They can discuss this idea with the person standing next to them, or they can form small groups of three or four and discuss the ideas collectively.

• JIGSAW - a cooperative learning technique in which students work in small groups. Jigsaw can be used in a variety of ways for a variety of goals, but it is primarily used for the acquisition and presentation of new material, review, or informed debate. In this method, each group member is assigned to become an "expert" on some aspect of a unit of study. After reading about their area of expertise, the experts from different groups meet to discuss their topic, and then return to their groups and take turns teaching their topics to their group mates.

• PHILOSOPHICAL CHAIRS -  a technique that allows students to critically think, ponder and write their belief. After being presented with a statement that will elicit thought and discussion, they should be told they will argue the merits of the statement and that their position in the room during the discussion will illustrate their stance. For example, if they agree with the statement, they should sit on the right side of the room. If they disagree, they should sit on the left side, and if undecided, they should sit in the back. At designated intervals, student should be given the opportunity to change sides if they change their viewpoint.

• CAROUSEL BRAINSTORMING  - Ideas gathered quickly, topic written as headings on chart paper. Students divided into groups and given different colored markers, move clockwise to brainstorm ideas. After all groups have written on each chart, they should do a gallery walk to see the ideas that were added. It  a great precursor to preparing a formal essay

• FOUR CORNERS POST -  Four pieces of paper in the four corners of the classroom. Write a controversial topic on the board (for example: Schools should eliminate report cards). Have students move to the corner that best matches their position (Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Strongly Disagree, Somewhat Disagree). If social cliques are a problem, have students write their choice on a card first in order to ensure honest reactions. Each corner will have 2 minutes to discuss and solidify their reasoning/logic. Each group selects a spokesperson to express the group's position. He/she has 30 seconds to express thoughts concisely and persuade their classmates. Other groups must listen intently. After the first corner presents, invite those who have been persuaded to move to the appropriate corner. Direct each group to present their group's position in turn. Allow students to move to the appropriate corners if they have changed their minds