Advice on Team Building and Collaboration at School
Team building and collaboration is a significant part of the culture of any organization. There are entire professions just dedicated to getting teams to work together. Classrooms and schools are no different. This month I have collected advice, tips, and tricks for the teacher on how they build teams and collaboration in education.
I want my students to work with and for each other, not against each other. That isn't to say that we don't have some healthy competition now and then in the form of review games, but it is not the focus of what I do in the classroom.
Many of the jobs that today's students end up having will require them to work as part of a team. Because this will be a necessary employment skill, I want to work to build teams within the classroom.
We also must model this behavior by working with our team at school. I am lucky in that my team works together very well together.
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Share, Share, Share! Your team is so valuable -Cheryl from Language Arts for Middle School
I am HUGE on having my students collaborate. I try to change up their groupings regularly and remind them that in life, you have work with a lot of different people. There will be people you like, don't like, respect, don't respect, etc. You have to learn to work with anyone, so I don't tolerate students being uncooperative within a group. -April from Cullom Corner
Make time to get to know your students. Greet them at the door as they walk in, walk around while they are working and ask them questions about their day. Check out more of my team building ideas. -Kristy from 2 Peas and a Dog
Looking for engagement, collaboration, and a way to sneak in some content? Check out these relays! You can use the templates with ANY content! The kiddos are having so much fun they barely realize they're doing any work!- Jamie from Miss Math Dork
We do "Village" discussions. We each bring forward a specific student who is struggling and who we are fighting to help. We give a two minute run down on the current situation, and then we brainstorm strategies. This is not an end all, be all discussion that solves all our kids' issues. It does provide a shot in the arm, some fresh perspective, and sometimes ideas that wouldn't have come about any other way. It also builds awareness in all of us of our student population. We can do it with just grade level colleagues, upper el/lower el, or K-5 teachers all together. Ideally, this happens every month... but you know how it goes....-Kathleen from Kidpeople Classroom
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I have two pieces of advice for you for team building too.
1) Have students complete group annotation of texts. Students read an annotate a portion of text together. I often follow this up with a group quiz or writing assignment.
2) Create assignments, activities, and projects where students can work together and build those skills. One of my favorite review activities for collaborative teams is to Build a Board Game.
Student work together to use information from any unit (here we studied women in history) to create a board game to market and sell.
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How do you build team work and collaboration in your classroom?
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November's topic is Organization and Supply Management
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