Collaborative Learning at Health Careers
Health Careers' Instructional Focus:
"Through teachers' strategic use of collaborative learning strategies and intentional groupings, students will engage in high-quality discussions that deepen their thinking and build the capacity for students to learn academic content and reflect on their thinking."
Health Careers' Collaborative Learning Definition:
“Collaborative Learning at Health Careers is when students work together to construct new meaning and understanding.”
Think, Pair, Share:
At Health Careers, we are focusing on the collaborative learning structure Think, Pair, Share (TPS) this cycle. TPS is most effective when used as an activation tool, usually in the beginning portion of a lesson. The purpose of TPS is not to get a product from students i.e the correct answer but rather to focus on the process, to get all students in a class thinking about a topic. This will activate their prior knowledge, their schema, to prepare them for the content delivery portion of the lesson.
To this end, the type of prompt or question provided to students for a TPS must be appropriate. Lower-level questions (on the DOK tool) only focus on correct answers. Open-ended questions that are more rigorous allow for true discussion which in turn allows all students in a class to participate and have access to the learning at hand (utilizing UDL principles/multiple entry points). Of course, the difficulty of a prompt must be tailored to both the lesson content and to what a teacher know about his/her students. The assumption here is that with appropriately designed prompts, a TPS will be more engaging and have less management issues.
Several teachers suggested that they would use the TPS strategy either in place of or directly following their Do Now, directly before their mini-lesson/lecture.
Teacher Team Professional Development Sessions Outline (Cycle 1):
"Through teachers' strategic use of collaborative learning strategies and intentional groupings, students will engage in high-quality discussions that deepen their thinking and build the capacity for students to learn academic content and reflect on their thinking."
Health Careers' Collaborative Learning Definition:
“Collaborative Learning at Health Careers is when students work together to construct new meaning and understanding.”
Think, Pair, Share:
At Health Careers, we are focusing on the collaborative learning structure Think, Pair, Share (TPS) this cycle. TPS is most effective when used as an activation tool, usually in the beginning portion of a lesson. The purpose of TPS is not to get a product from students i.e the correct answer but rather to focus on the process, to get all students in a class thinking about a topic. This will activate their prior knowledge, their schema, to prepare them for the content delivery portion of the lesson.
To this end, the type of prompt or question provided to students for a TPS must be appropriate. Lower-level questions (on the DOK tool) only focus on correct answers. Open-ended questions that are more rigorous allow for true discussion which in turn allows all students in a class to participate and have access to the learning at hand (utilizing UDL principles/multiple entry points). Of course, the difficulty of a prompt must be tailored to both the lesson content and to what a teacher know about his/her students. The assumption here is that with appropriately designed prompts, a TPS will be more engaging and have less management issues.
Several teachers suggested that they would use the TPS strategy either in place of or directly following their Do Now, directly before their mini-lesson/lecture.
Teacher Team Professional Development Sessions Outline (Cycle 1):
- Sept. 20 and 27: Initial planning meetings with administration and baseline walkthrough.
- Oct. 10: What does collaborative learning mean to Health Careers? Creating a common definition.
- Oct. 17: How do we establish and manage a culture of collaboration in our classrooms, focusing specifically on the Think, Pair, Share strategy? When is it appropriate to use the TPS strategy? What is the function of a TPS?
- Oct. 23: Bring a lesson plan that utilizes Think, Pair, Share. We will discuss and give each other feedback.
- Oct. 30: Observe the teaching of the TPS portion of the lessons hopefully utilizing inter-visitations and model classrooms.
- Nov. 13: Discuss evidence from classrooms. Reflect on strategy and our learning.
- Nov. 20:
- Dec. 4: Final walkthrough and debrief meeting. Did we accomplish our goal?
