Tools for Successful Collaborative Learning

Tools for Successful Collaborative Learning

If you don’t already know by now, I am quite a fan of collaborative learning. Maybe fan isn’t quite the right term, obsessed may be more accurate? Either way, I am passionate about implementing collaborative learning into the fiber of my classroom and advocating for and equipping other teachers to use it in their classrooms as well. One of the things I love most about collaboration is that it brings the amount of talking students get to do in the classroom to an all time HIGH. Does that proposition chill you to your very core? Why would I want my students talking all the time when I spend so much time trying to get them QUIET?! And that is PRECISELY why this method is so successful, because we all know we are fighting a losing battle trying to keep students quiet all day, but also, research shows that students learn much more when they get to talk about their learning and process it with other people out LOUD.

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Train Your Students to STOP INTERRUPTING Each Other

Train Your Students to STOP INTERRUPTING Each Other

We all know it is natural for the majority of students to interrupt while they’re having conversations.  They want to be heard, and they want to ensure their friends and peers affirm their own point of view. SO THEY SAY THEIR OPINION AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE OVER ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS AT THEIR TABLE.  The struggle is real, am I right teacher friend? So I created a Talking Stick to help scaffold my students’ development in learning how to LISTEN and allow one person to talk in a team at a time.  

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