The Act Of Classroom Collaboration

In my classroom, I demonstrate collaboration by attending the Kinder PLC meeting every Tuesday. These meetings help the grade level teachers to collaborate. For example, to come up with ideas on how to teach a specific concept, talk about any updates, student assistance team (SAT) , and data analysis. I demonstrate collaboration by working with my colleagues to come up with writing prompts and writing rubrics. By doing this we make sure the expectations in each classroom are the same.

Collaboration: In a community of learners, students work together in teams, partners, or groups. This allows students to gain social skills and increases students’ motivation for the project. Students share ideas and gain a new understanding of the content.

I approach collaboration as a team player, and I believe students need more than one person to guide them to their full educational potential. Also, active and prepared participation of weekly PLC meetings with the teachers of my special education students to plan collaborative curriculum have increased results in math and reading substantially. Participating in co-teaching furthers my repertoire of knowledge to assist my students. I have learned a vast amount from sharing and consulting with colleagues regarding students, observing mentoring teachers, and planning activities to ensure growth in students.

Collaboration supports children to engage meaningfully with each other. When children collaborate with their teachers and peers, they effectively combine together to join in a deep and wilful desire to co-labour or unpack a series of events on topics of interest and importance. Collaboration has the capacity to provide rich learning environments for children with diverse, corresponding motivations and learning practices. It also produces new engaging challenges and opportunities for children to express their thoughts and feelings. These combine to enrich and transform the relationships children have with the subject material and enhance their relationships with peers and

Collaboration between teachers is a key component to professional development that will lead to higher student achievement. There is a need for schools to set up time for teachers to be able to collaborate together. This allows for teachers to help each other, matchup content, teach each other new and best practices, troubleshoot student issues just to name a few of the areas that collaboration time can help foster within a school. The key is to build time for teachers to be able to collaborate during the school day or week. This collaboration time needs to be between grade levels, departments, and cross curricular when needed. For many schools this is an afterthought to the school schedule or a fleeting thought after the master schedule is completed. A principal needs to keep an open mind to any strategy that will enable the teachers to be able to collaborate for the good of the students and the school.

I have not yet worked in a school setting, but I have worked in several agencies and offices where collaboration with colleagues was present. One agency I have worked in was a domestic violence shelter, which housed up to forty-five women and children. In addition, we ran a twenty-four hour crisis hotline, provided individual and group counseling services, and educated those out in the community about domestic violence. It took a lot of collaboration with colleagues to have the agency run smoothly and effectively. When issues arose with clients staying in the shelter, my colleagues and I would met to discuss the issues and how we were going to work together to solve them. Together we were able to discuss all of these factors and agree upon

Collaboration is a team, which is composed of the parents and the group of professional who are working together to help the child get the resources needed to succeed. The team of professionals involve the parents and work together in the identification and assessment process, program planning, evaluations and as well as input and decision

Working collaboratively also fosters a culture of community in the classroom” (Equity for English Language Learners). When teaching in an elementary school, like Glencairn, it is critical to understand that not everything you say will be understood and you have to be flexible with your lesson plans.

During my second preclinical experience at Westview Hills Middle School, I learned the importance of cooperation and collaboration among teachers at a school. I was able to observe team and department meetings during this experience. It became clear that it is important for teachers to work together in order to provide a positive atmosphere at a school and in a specific department. Although it became obvious that personalities and teaching styles were different throughout the school, the teachers still acted professionally and used each other as resources in

Co-teaching also allows more opportunities for small group and one-to-one learning, and stronger modeling during lessons. The teachers work collaboratively when creating lesson plans for the class, and the instructor does not give students different task and the reason for this practice is because the instructor does not want students to work on different task because if someone visits the classroom, they will easily identify the special education students. Therefore, fitting in with the other students and completing the same task is an important way to get them feeling

Although collaboration is mistakenly thought of as an easy and natural process where everyone works together, it is not that simple (Friend, 2000). When researching barriers educators face dealing with collaboration the following four stood out to be of huge importance: administrative support, actual time for the collaboration process to take place, a lack of professional development that teaches how to collaborate and the consideration of having a large number of adults that must share ideas and work

Cooperative learning will be a method I use in my classroom. I believe that in a cooperative learning group a student can learn socialization skills and how to work with others. This goes along with the pragmatic/progressive philosophy that children learn by doing. The progressivism teaching style also includes the incorporation of problem-solving and critical thinking techniques. I want my students to learn to think for themselves and be able to function in society. At the same time, I will be a fellow learner myself and

The first is where one teaches and one observes, a useful model when observation and data collection is necessary, but it does not give both teachers equivalent responsibilities. Station teaching breaks students into small groups and has them rotate to several teacher-led and/or independent work stations, a model which involves both teachers but can be noisy and distracting for both teachers and students. In parallel teaching, students are divided into two equal groups and each partner teaches the same material; this method ensures diversity and lowers teacher-student ratio, but requires that both teachers have similar content knowledge and teach at a similar pace. In alternative teaching, one teacher works with a small group of students who need additional instruction, while the other teacher works with the remaining students; this benefits those students who need more intensive instruction, but it can stigmatize them if they are always placed in this small group instruction. One teach while one assists is a method that allows for students to be supported during a lesson, but it can be over-used with the eventual result of having little benefit over a one-teacher classroom. The final and possibly the most effective method is team teaching, where both teachers equally share planning and instruction. This method allows teachers to draw off one another’s strengths and provides greater diversity of teaching, but it may be difficult for

Collaboration and co-teaching is very important in a classroom. This is a very effective way to reach the needs of all the students. In my classroom we have a lot of people in and out during the day. I have a general ed teacher, paraprofessional, intervention specialist two days a week Tuesday and Thursday, and high school aides.

All four processes- collaboration, consultation, teamwork, and co-teaching, as they occur in the school context, involve interaction among school personnel, families, and students working together to achieve common goals. (Dettmer, Dyck, Thurston, 2005, p. 7)