This term one of my little wonderings is around collaborative learning. It is a skill I am wanting to promote with my students and so each week in Term 3 the students have to complete a collaborative task.

So far I have given the students a collaborative Religious Education task using a digital tool – CoSpaces. Next up students completed a collaborative reading response to a journal story we worked through in our reading groups. Finally, last week my students had to work on a Science/Maths task together. I actually have 4 of these cross curricular tasks planned over the next three weeks. The first task was easy but they do get noticeably more difficult.

Students have been placed into mixed ability Learning Partners. This is something I do each term, so the students are familiar with sharing their work with each other.
So far the collaborative tasks have worked well. Students are given around 20minutes of class time to get started on the activity. From then it is up to them to negotiate/plan with their partner, when they work on the activity. I have been impressed with the organisation of the partners and the work output.

I haven’t done much research around collaborative learning and am reading this website as I work through this process – click here. I am also having an observation next week around this so I will definitely have some thoughts after getting some feedback.