Make ANY Project Collaborative
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If you’ve been with me for a while, you’re sure to have stumbled upon one of my many articles on collaboration. It is my passion and mission to implement an effective and empowering collaborative culture in my own classroom and equip and support other teachers to do the same.
If you’ve been reading a lot of my collaboration posts and feeling like you don’t know how to get started and feeling overwhelmed by the thought of creating a collaborative project from scratch, I am here to tell you there is an easier way!
First of all, you don’t have to create a new project from scratch. Instead, you can turn ANY existing project into a collaborative project. In 6 easy steps, you can transform your individual student project into a collaborative project, which will automatically boost student engagement and learning. Students are capable of so much more when they utilize the different strengths and talents within their team to create something greater than they could have achieved on their own.
6 Steps to turn any project into a COLLABORATIVE project
Pick a project to transform. This can be anything from a research report to a STEM project. This process works best with projects you’ve done before and you know well because you don’t have to spend a lot of time understanding the basics of the project and you can spend more time transforming it and adjusting it to fit the collaborative model. (But you can still do this with new projects too!)
Now, imagine how your students can work in teams to complete the project tasks. Will it change the outcome or product? How so? Can you add more complex tasks that an individual wouldn’t have been able to do, but now a team can accomplish?
This is the brainstorming stage, and my favorite way to do this is to talk to my colleagues about it. We come up with the best ideas when we are talking about it together. (Now THAT’S collaboration!)
After brainstorming, get your ideas on paper and make a plan for what adjustments need to be made to the original project. If you are working on this with your teacher team (which I highly recommend), you can divide up the tasks that need to be completed for the project transformation and set deadlines for yourselves so you have time to bring all the pieces together cohesively at the end.
If you don’t already have one, make a RUBRIC for your new collaborative project. For more on that, see my article here. Or you can adjust the old project’s rubric to include the new expectations as well as collaborative skills.
Create some lesson plans for your new project using the 3 steps of any collaborative activity.
Now try out the project with your class, and prepare to be AMAZED at the outcome! Even if there are little bumps and hiccups along the way, involve your class in the process of reflecting on how the project went and making adjustments to it for your next year’s class.
My students love answering the question during debrief: “What would you change in this project for next year's class?” They usually come up with really great feedback and great suggestions!
If you try this process and makeover one of your past projects, I’d love to hear from you! Leave me a comment below!
