- English Language Arts and Reading
- Grade 3
- Developing and sustaining foundational language skills
As a whole class, establish the expectations and rules that all agree to abide by when working in groups. Solicit input from all students. As students begin a group activity, remind them of the agreed-upon expectations.
Behaviors to observe:
This SE requires students to work as a group to determine classroom rules and expectations. This requires students to demonstrate their understanding of the importance of individual contributions in a group situation. This also requires students to respect the opinion of others. Students will need to work cooperatively, using active listening and sharing of ideas. Students should be provided with ample opportunities to work collaboratively.
1. Olsen, J. K., Rummel, N., & Aleven, V. (2017, June). Grantee Learning Alone or Together? A Combination Can Be Best!, Paper presented at the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Philadelphia, PA. Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?q=collaborative+learning&pr=on&ft=on&ff1=eduElementary+Education&id=ED577021
Summary: This research explored the use of an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for math instruction in a collaborative versus individual learning environment, across a group of 4th and 5th grade students. Results showed that students spent less time when working collaboratively; however, the learning gains were the same for both individual and collaborative interaction with the ITS.
2. Tainsh, N. (2014). Going south with Sophie Scott: a journey into oral language. Practically Primary, 19(1), 31-33. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A361713105/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=ebafcfb7
Summary: The author examines the value of students' classroom discussion for oral language development. As a collaborative activity, students were required to adapt an assigned story into a multimodal format, which encouraged a "wide range of immediate, complex, and unplanned oral language" discussions as students had to "express views, justify ideas, negotiate, evaluate and collaborate to produce their planned oral scripts."
3. Peterson, S. S., & Rajendram, S. (2019). Teacher-child and peer talk in collaborative writing and writing-mediated play: Primary classrooms in Northern Canada. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 42(1), 28-40. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A571514310/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=7dbe79ee
Summary: This research examines teacher-child and peer interactions during collaborative writing and writing-mediated play in 10 northern Canadian primary classrooms. In the collaborative writing contexts involving teacher-assigned texts, children more frequently talked about the letters and sounds of words, or the details of drawings in their texts. In both contexts, children used language for affiliative purposes, as the demands of the collaborative settings required that they find ways to get along with each other.