Successful Collaboration

Creating authentic and collaborative projects in my future classroom is something that will help my students engage in learning not only by themselves but together, as a cohort. Science classrooms are not always the best way to have collaborative projects since someone might always get away with not doing as much as others in the group, but in certain situations it is beneficial. 

Authentic projects in a middle school science class can be incorporated in many different units during the year. In a physics lesson, group members can work together on a thermodynamics project about how warming and cooling an egg give it capabilities to do things one would not assume an egg could do, like get forced through a soda bottle opening without breaking. The group would be able to work together to hypothesis what they expected to happen in the experiment during all phases. Then each member of the group would have specific tasks to do during the lab, scribe, egg handler, egg cooler, etc. Each person feels important and not left out, but also having their voice heard about what they assume will happen. These group projects allow the shy kids to have their voice heard or ideas considered when only a small number of their classmates are the ones interacting with them. The louder students will also be able to be a leader and organizer who can help get everyone involved. Students benefit from getting some freedom but at the same time some structure with only being able to work as fast as your group works together. 

There are also ways that a lab can incorporate all students on the same field instead of smaller groups. This type of project allows for full classroom interaction with all students and requires them to work cohesively to solve the problem in front of them. In science, we work with lens/mirrors with refraction and reflection. In my class, I could make a maze through the class of mirrors and obstacles with a laser pointer at the front of the class. All students would be assigned a specific mirror around the class or be "guides" along the barriers. The students must work together to have the laser reflect of all mirrors correctly and around obstacles to have shine on the final outcome at the back on the classroom. If one person is not helping or not responding well to the group dynamics, then the whole project is off. Kids like a sense of gratification and success and if one student keeps that from everyone then the project can be a failure. 

Kids learn more then just curriculum in school and being involved in teamwork is a key item that should be learned and practiced in schools these days. Teamwork is a part of everyday like: working life, social life, family life, everything involves working in some sort of group for a common goal (Larson, 2010). Technology can help bring these teamworks together. We learned last week about internet workshops and internet projects that enable student learning in groups that strive to finish a project together. These types of technology and projects we learned about are good stepping stones to bring technology into the classroom to help bring group projects to the forefront. There are many different types of internet projects, workshops, and webquests that will get the ball rolling on a world of possibility for my life as a science teacher.

References:

Larson, B. F., (2010) Education Resource Center Developed by the Collaboration for NBT Education,      Teamwork in the Classroom, Retrieved from: http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Teamwork.htm