The Coaching Corner

Working together to solve problems and complete projects deepens students’ learning and builds collaborative skills. Learn how to design activities to help develop these skills.

Most of us who teach believe in the power of collaboration and frequently engage our students in collaborative activities. But how many times have we put students in groups only to watch them interact with their laptops instead of each other? Or pursue their own individual goals instead of consult with one another? Or complain about a lazy teammate?

Promoting real collaboration is hard to do well—and it doesn’t just happen on its own. If we want real collaboration, we need to intentionally design it as part of our learning activity. These are five strategies to encourage effective collaboration.

CREATE LEARNING ACTIVITIES THAT ARE COMPLEX

Students need a reason to collaborate. If the assignment is too simple, they can more easily do it alone. At most, they may check in with each other or interact in superficial ways. The real reason to collaborate is because the task is complex—it is too difficult and has too many pieces to complete alone.

Complex activities are challenging, engaging, stimulating, and multilayered. Complex activities require “positive interdependence” (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008), a situation in which attaining the goal, completing the task, being successful, and getting a good grade require that the team work together and share knowledge.

One way to do this is through rigorous projects that require students to identify a problem (for example, balancing population growth in their city with protection of existing green spaces) and agree—through research, discussion, debate, and time to develop their ideas—on a solution which they must then propose together.

PREPARE STUDENTS TO BE PART OF A TEAM

Collaborative groups can’t be assigned—they have to be built and nurtured. Students often need to learn how to work effectively with others and as part of a team. We have to help students understand the what, why, and how of collaboration. We can do this in several ways:

• Help students understand the benefits of collaboration and what successful collaboration looks like.
• Guide students through the stages of team building (forming, storming, norming, and performing).
• Give students time and opportunities within the activity to develop leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills.
• Establish expectations and norms for working together.
• Design, or have students design, protocols for handling conflict disagreement so they can resolve issues within their teams.
• Teach students active listening skills.

MINIMIZE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FREE RIDING

When students complain about collaborative groups, it often has to do with the free riding of one member who lets others do all the work and then benefits from the group grade. We can eliminate free riding in a number of ways:

• Create small groups of no more than four or five people. When there is less room to hide, nonparticipation is more difficult.
• Ensure a high degree of individual accountability (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008) by assessing students both individually and as a group. For example, at the end of the day give students an individual quiz based on the intended outcome of their collaborative activity.
• Design meaningful team roles that relate to the content and to the task. Roles like timekeeper are episodic and don’t intellectually engage students in the content, and this can encourage free riding. In contrast, more meaningful roles such as manager, monitor, and leaders for each subtask of the activity give students ownership in the process and allow the teacher to assess students based on successful completion of these roles.
• Have students evaluate their own participation and effort and that of each team member and triangulate those assessments with your own

BUILD IN MANY OPPORTUNITIES FOR DISCUSSION AND CONSENSUS

Many group projects are based on efficiency, dividing labor to create a product in the most effective way possible. This focus on the product means that we often ignore the process of collaboration. Rich discussions that connect students with the experiences of others, that engage them deeply in a shared intellectual experience, and that promote coming to consensus are essential to collaboration.

For instance, students can come to consensus around a solution or decision where they must defend or propose a common vision or develop a set of beliefs or principles. This focus on discussion and consensus builds both academic and social skills—students learn to defend their ideas through evidence and analytical reasoning, to negotiate meaning, and to argue constructively.

FOCUS ON STRENGTHENING AND STRETCHING EXPERTISE

The challenge of designing good collaborative activities is ensuring that all students, even those who struggle, play an important role. Collaboration should not just strengthen students’ existing skills but ensure that their interactions stretch existing knowledge and expand one another’s expertise. If, for example, a student is much stronger in one skill than her peers in her group, she can teach others and her grade can be contingent upon how much her peers learn.

In collaborative activities, we want to ensure that students don’t just occupy the same physical space but that they share an intellectual space—that they learn more, do more, and experience more together than they would alone. As teachers, we can promote real collaboration by shifting our role from instructor to coach—promoting team autonomy, checking in on students and providing instant feedback, and helping them increasingly learn to work together productively to attain a common goal.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Teaching Middle and High School Students to Work in Groups | Edutopia

Asia Hamilton-District Instructional Coach-New Teachers Middle/High

'Wait, there's a difference between collaboration and cooperation?' Yes! And it's a difference that has a huge impact on how teams work together.

Collaboration and cooperation are two words which are often used interchangeably, especially in the workplace. Both terms are so overused that their distinct meanings have blended into one. They’ve effectively become buzzwords. But contrary to popular belief, they're different!

There’s a small but crucial difference which impacts a number of ways work gets done in organizations, including how people associate their work with the organization’s goals, and how they see their work in relation to their colleague’s. So it’s worth investigating the actual definitions of these two words. Let’s get right into it.

What is collaboration?

First, let’s define collaboration. Collaboration is when a group of people come together and work on a project in support of a shared objective, outcome, or mission. It’s a photographer working with a designer to create a cover image, or the technology department working with the marketing team to improve their customer journey.

Here’s an example:

You and I work in different departments. You’re the lead developer on the tech team and I’m a senior product designer. We get together to discuss the product we’re working on and decide together that we need to make it more efficient for our users. This is our shared vision for the product. Together we design and implement a major change to the product that accomplishes this. In this respect, we’re co-authors of this particular project. We share credit.

What is cooperation?

On the other hand, cooperation is when a group of people work in support of another’s goals. It’s a teammate helping you put together your presentation. Or a developer helping explain how to word the technical details in your monthly product email.

The key point to note here is that there isn’t really a shared vision. Collaboration implies shared ownership and interest in a specific outcome. If you and I collaborate on a project, we have shared authorship. Cooperation, on the other hand, could just mean that you've given me help on something I'm working on and that I'm ultimately responsible for.

Why is this important?

The difference between these two terms is important because one term implies ownership by one individual and the other implies co-ownership by two or more individuals—or even by an entire organization. It’s the difference between working on someone else’s project (furthering their goals) and working with someone to achieve a goal which you both share.

In short, it’s a question of ownership. The way your organization frames ownership of projects and goals, it turns out, has a profound impact on your people’s experience within your organization. Collaboration, more so than cooperation, communicates to your people that their work is meaningful and part of a larger group effort. In this sense, each collaborator turns into an equal stakeholder, and gains a sense that they're contributing to something larger than themselves.

This doesn’t mean that cooperation is worse than collaboration, or that it has to be one way or the other. In fact, people working together, especially in larger organizations, sometimes struggle to find shared visions just by the nature of how teams are structured. Sometimes there just isn’t any identifiable common ground. Similarly, people might cooperate on projects that other people are collaborating on. They offer their services but don’t share the same goal, vision, and co-ownership. Both collaboration and cooperation are necessary modes of effective teamwork.

Of course there are some major benefits to finding common ground between teams and implementing changes to ensure collaboration not only happens, but makes sense. The first step is to find and communicate a shared sense of purpose between departments.

Creating a shared sense of purpose

A shared purpose, above all, is the key driver of collaboration. But communicating that purpose and instilling it in people is a massive challenge in and of itself. Collaboration can’t be enforced; it has to come naturally out of a shared interest in achieving goals. Only then can the collaborative process take hold in an organization.

A lot of this will depend on your leaders’ ability to break down divisions between departments and align teams around common goals. This can be done in regular All Hands meetings, quarterly get-togethers, and by frequently celebrating collaborative relationships between teams: holding them up as something all employees should aspire to. Leaders should identify shared visions and acknowledge how teams formed working relationships to make those visions a reality.

But emphasizing a shared sense of purpose isn’t only the work of leaders. It can be done by anyone, either in an official meeting setting or just in casual conversation: “What’s your team working on? Oh, interesting. There’s some overlap with my team. Let’s set up a meeting next week to see how we can achieve that goal together.”

Collaboration as a process

When people share the same purpose, collaboration happens almost naturally. It’s actually kind of weird! But effective collaboration does require some organization. And even the most collaborative environment will find room for cooperation too.

One way to go about making this happen is to sit down with other teams regularly to find intersections where collaborating makes sense. At Jostle, teams are always getting together in conference rooms to give status reports, express pain points, and figure out how we can help each other achieve shared goals. We've all made it part of our collaborative process to always be exploring the ways we intersect with other teams. On top of that, sharing information is crucial, for both the process and the articulation of shared purpose.

Finding complementary skills between teams is one more way to build the connections necessary for collaboration. Focus on people whose combined skills can handle shared projects and start to build relationships from that. Think of this as exploring a potential partnership that bridges the departmental divide (hopefully taking down any silos with it).

Conclusion

Collaboration and cooperation are not at odds with each other. Rather, they’re two ways of making teamwork happen. And although this article focuses more on collaboration, I want to be clear that these two are often occurring in tandem, depending on the stakeholders involved. A collaborative environment is also simultaneously a cooperative environment.

https://blog.jostle.me/blog/collaboration-vs-cooperation

Keep up the hard work,

Julie Deffenbaugh

New Teacher District Instructional Coach - Elementary

jdeffenbaugh@mauryk12.org

Preparing to Teach the Unit & Lessons

Unit preparation is critical to student success. If teachers are prepared, then we are comfortable in our delivery of knowledge. Because we have curriculum, we don't have to write our lessons. However, we do need to take the time to process what will be learned. That is why PREPARATION is so important.

When preparing to teach the unit, consider the following:

1. What strengths do your students bring to this unit? Given students' current knowledge and skills, what will be the most challenging in the unit?
2. Where will you spend more time in the unit? Where can you move faster?
3. When will your team plan for and discuss daily lessons? When will you analyze student work?
4. What knowledge and understanding do YOU need to build before teaching this content to your students? What support do you need?
   
5. What supplies/materials will you need?

Now, next steps. You've prepared your unit, but now you have to prepare for your daily lesson. Consider the following questions as you prepare for your day:

1. Where will you spend more time in the lesson? Where can you move faster?
2. How will you check for understanding?
3. What knowledge and understanding do YOU need to build before teaching this content to your students? What support do you need?
4. What supplies/materials will you need to prepare?

Being ready for learning is critical for student learning. Getting our minds wrapped around the instruction is a first step that does not need to be skipped.

ELA Standards Guide Grades 6-12

The state has created a website and supplemental resources designed to provide teachers with a deeper understanding of each standard.

The guide includes 4 sections for each standard:

• An unpacking of key elements of the standard
• A glossary of key terms in the standard
• Examples of how the standard can be represented in classroom tasks
• A snapshot of the vertical progression of the standard

There are webinars and materials to support the use of the materials. It is a great resource! See your school-level ELA coach or contact Dr. Elkins if you want support digging into the resources.

https://bestforall.tnedu.gov/resource/ela-standards-guides-grades-6-12

Questions Students Use to Develop Their Mathematical Thinking Skills

• Determine the problem: What is the problems we are trying to solve? Why is this problem important? How is it similar to other things we have done?
• Demonstrate mathematical reasoning: What do we need to do to solve the problem? What predictions can we make before we begin? What will we need to do to justify and explain our problem-solving approach and solution?
• Organize data and draw conclusions: How can we organize our data? What conclusions can we draw?
• Check results and correct mistakes: What mathematics principles did we use to design our plan? Do these results make sense? Is anything missing? How do we know this solution is correct?
• Model and define new concepts: Do these conclusions pose questions for further exploration? What have we learned?
• Make judgments and create proofs: Why do we think this is the best plan? What examples and counterexamples can we provide to support our reasoning? Is our proof logical? Is there any part of our proof that we cannot support with a rational argument?
• Communicate problem and solution to others: How can we share our work of solving the problem along with our solution so it makes sense to others? What is the best method to communicate our findings?

https://www.solutiontree.com/free-resources/instruction/deep-discourse

How Content Learning Helps Students

Daniel T. Willingham (2009) is a noted cognitive psychologist whose book, Why Don't Students Like School? provides a review of the research on learning and addressed to educators. Here are a few key points Willingham makes about content knowledge:

• Knowledge is essential to reading comprehension. Willingham makes the point that the more readers know, the more they bring to the text. He writes: "writing contains gaps - lots of gaps - from which the writer omits information that is necessary to understand the logical flow of ideas. Writers assume that the reader has the knowledge to fill the gaps." One study Willingham reports on shows that students who have more background knowledge about a topic will comprehend a text on that topic better than a reader who has superior reading skills but little knowledge about the topic.
• Content knowledge improves retention. Willingham gives the following example: "Everyone reads a story or brief article...The next day people with background knowledge about the topic remember substantially more of the material than the people who do not have background knowledge...Why? If you know more about a particular topic, you can better understand and remember new information about that topic." Teachers may have experienced this phenomenon themselves. When one has been reading about a particular topic, for instance, diabetes, then one is more interested in any new information about the disease, and more likely to remember the new things learned. This reasoning is behind pre-reading activities such as KWL charts, which activate background knowledge before reading activities. When we are able to connect to existing schema (structures of knowledge), we are able to better retain the new information.
• Critical thinking, needed for college, careers and life, requires factual knowledge. According to Willingham, "Data from the last thirty years lead to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that's true not simply because you need something to think about. The very processes that teacher care about most - critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving - are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory."

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Students Use Informational Text as a Basis for Inquiry

Scientists and engineers don't just mix solutions, look through a microscope, or build a robot.They have to read texts to gather and interpret information. Scientists learn about and come to understand the natural world through text as well as firsthand investigations (Cervetti et al., 2006). Reading to learn doesn't stop after absorbing what a text says. Scientists read to learn by digging deeper. They use informational text as a basis for inquiry.

Students need opportunities to read as scientists do at the point of use in their learning. For example, if students are learning about Earth's changes, using a text about the Grand Canyon serves two purposes. First, the text gives access to something that can't be directly observed in the classroom. Second, the text might tell the reader the facts of how deep the canyon is or what types of rock make up its layers, but equally important is what's not told that leads to inquiry. What did the Grand Canyon look like in the past? What lives or lived there? How do we know? All students, especially ones who want to be scientists someday, need exposure to informational text to practice reading with a purpose.

https://landing.carolina.com/smithsonian-resources/read-like-a-scientist-whitepaper

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