Collaborative Leanring

          

 

        A question that has been running threw teachers minds’ is, does collaborative learning support literacy.  The answer is absolutely. It improves the educational and psychological outcomes of students. Collaborative learning is a method of learning and teaching in which students group together to explore a significant question or assignment. It allows students to exchange, debate and discussion.

            After researching about collaborative learning I have found out that it has many benefits.  It helps to celebrate diversity. This helps students work with all types of people. This type of learning helps acknowledge the individual differences of students. Collaborative learning helps students get involved and allows them to have more opportunities for personal feedback. Since there are more exchanges of work in the groups, the students get more ideas and responses. This kind of feedback is not possible in large group discussion because there is simply to many people and the entire class listens to your ideas. Collaborative learning with students has shown improvements in student achievement, race relations, acceptance of academically handicapped students and self esteem.

            When I become a teacher I will make sure that each group has set goals and objectives. This way later on they can assess how they have progressed. A task of mine will be that every group member participates and has learned something. I will walk around while the groups are being held and check in on students. It is good to have each group member responsible for a concept. They then will have learned something and then have to teach the group what they have just learned. By teaching the material, it allows them to get more practice and focus more. This allows students to become leaders. In class we learned about reciprocal learning. We watched videos about how this was practiced.