Many teachers forget that when you have students work collaboratively, working collaboratively is a skill that needs to be taught. Some groups might have a natural knack for it but all groups can be taught to work cooperatively if you teach the skills necessary explicitly. This is how we do it…
1. We create a T-chart together. A T-Chart has a large T on it which creates two columns and a header. At the top write collaboration (or teamwork) then draw an eye on one side and an ear on the other side. Ask the students to tell you what we expect to see if everyone was working together and what would we expect to hear. List these on the chart in the appropriate column.
2. Then give the students 5-10 minutes to work independently. Your job as a teacher is to go around and look for things that were mentioned on the chart while students work independently. The first time or even the first week I wouldn’t interact with students but see everything and take
notes. At the end of the 5-10 minutes you debrief together and ask the class how it went. Be sure to mention things you saw in practice that
came from the chart. Like “I heard Rosa say ‘good job’ to her partner” or “Tommy was looking his partner in the eye when he spoke.” Focusing on the positive behavior, of course, generally gets you better results.
This is a long process of several days or weeks. This is for every class not just the ones that teachers say can’t work collaboratively. The good news is that when you train them all classes can work collaboratively. The bad news is that the first couple of months of school you can’t give students real complex collaborative tasks yet until they’ve been trained.
Thank you for the podcasts about IWT. I have 8 years experience with OCR, 5 years training with Governor’s Reading Institute, numerous hours of work with coaching staff but learned more from your delightful podcast than all of those put together. I especially appreciated your comments about the initial sessions and the teacher’s role of roaming the room with an index card, pencil, and a smile. IWT or Workshop has been a struggle for me from the beginning. I am a veteran teacher with 18 years teaching experience. Yet, in so many areas, I feel like a brand new teacher. I appreciate your candor, your humorous approach, and your suggestions to make workshop fun and truly independent work time. I have one of those “these kids will never figure out how to be independent” groups. While we have made LOTS of progress, it was mainly through overloading them with lots of pencil paper tasks. Your suggestions inspired my imagination to be more creative and give my students more !
opportunities for choice while working within state standards. Thanks again.
Hi Mathew, I am a big fan of opencourtresources.com I came back to the classroom this past October. As I finish my first year, I haven’t really gotten to teach procedures for IWT:( You provide some great suggestions. As I plan for year two, your website is a good example of how we can bring content together in one place. I am planning on building wiki for different curricular levels for third grade. I will link to your site as a great resource for Language Arts. Thanks for stopping by my classroom blog. http://room36.wordpress.com