Collaboration

  As an educator it is my job to ensure that students have authentic learning experiences and are actively engaged with the learning environment, which promotes a deeper understanding of the content and standards being taught. In order to ensure that this happens during this unit I have designed a unit that is interesting and engaging. The unit will begin with the question “How does day turn into night?” I will employ exciting activating strategies through technology to tap into children’s prior knowledge and to help them make connections with their real life and the content being taught which will provide them a deeper understanding of the content (Cennamo, et. al., 2010). The students will begin the unit by watching several time lapse videos of sunrises and sunsets, and then we will work together to complete a KWL chart, where the students will dictate what they already know about how day turns into night and what they want to know about how day turns into night. The KWL chart will be revisited throughout the five days of this unit to correct any misconceptions that may be on the Know side of the chart and to fill in the Learned side of the chart. I will use flexible grouping strategies that place children of varying ability levels together, so that the children have the opportunity to learn from each other and learn to work as a team to make decisions about how to solve the problem (Cennamo, et al., 2010).  ** As members of collaborative groups, how will you support students’ efforts to identify solutions to the problem you are using as the framework for your PBL instructional unit? **   When I decided on my grouping strategies I had to decide if I would group children into pairs or into groups of four, I felt like putting children in pairs would be restricting for some, but groups of four would probably leave one member of the group out. So I decided to put children into trios. I think trios will encourage conversations about how to solve the problem, it will show students that there are multiple ways to approach and solve a problem (Cennamo, et.al., 2010). In Kindergarten we are working very hard on developing appropriate social skills and interactions, so I will spend a lot of time modeling with and for the students proper group behaviors and what to do when you disagree with your group members (Cennamo, et. al, 2010). I will encourage students to learn by doing and through exploration. Students will use technology tools such as the SmartBoard to explore websites that demonstrate the changes in the day and night sky. I will provide a soft scaffold for children before they begin exploring the various websites, because many of my students struggle through navigating the internet. Each trio will be assigned a laptop with a favorites folder that has all of the websites they can explore bookmarked, on the SmartBoard I will model ways to explore the various sites and provide them with strategies to employ if they get stuck (Cennamo, et. al., 2010). I will provide globes and flashlights for hands on learning, and we will also work together throughout the day to observe changes in the day sky and the sun’s position in the sky. Students will work collaboratively to record their shadows at various points in the day applying their newfound knowledge about time patterns to help them solve the problem.   ** What criteria will you use to assign learners to collaborative groups, including a rationale? What will be the size of the collaborative groups you will include in your unit? **   In assigning collaborative groups I take several factors into consideration. I look at student ability levels. I try to avoid ability grouping as much as possible because I feel as though students learn from one another and putting two struggling students together is not necessarily setting them up for success. I try to look at the dynamics of my classroom, I am not going to put two students who have very strong personalities together because that can be a recipe for conflict. I am also not going to put two students together who play together all the time because they are not building new relationships. I try to group students based on their strengths and weaknesses, by putting a student with a strong personality and average academic performance with a student with a less dominant personality and high academic performance together, so that they can complement each other. For this unit I will use groups of three or trios because I think that constructing a model works best with groups of three because anything more and there will likely be a set of hands that does not have any work to do. Because my Kindergarten students are so young and they do not have all of the social skills in place for completely independent group work, the groups will be provided a lot of support from myself, the paraprofessional, and the Special Education collaborative teacher. Before we actually begin our work we are going to go over the roles of the students during the collaborative process. Each student will get a chance to do each job at least once during the five days of the unit. I want students to have a chance to do all of the jobs within the group at least once so that they get to experience each role and understand the importance of each role (Cennamo, et. al., 2010).   ** Which digital tools and websites are you considering for collaboration in your unit? **    For this unit I am considering using several different digital tools to help students engage more with the content. I plan on using Google Earth for students to virtually visit different areas on earth that we discuss having different times and seasons than us. I also plan on using Kodak digital cameras and the website [|www.picsforlearning.com] to record students shawdows during different points in the day. Students will also visit several websites such as [], [], [], [], and several others that will be in a bookmarked folder on each group’s laptop. Lastly students will be able to use Skype to interact with a class in Casablanca, Morocco that is taught by my aunt. They will be able to see that this class ending their day just as our day is getting started because they are five hours ahead of the Eastern time zone.  ** How will you assess participation of the students in their collaborative groups? **    In our school district we do not necessarily give grades, but we assess student progress towards the standards. In Kindergarten there are not any standards that address collaboration, however it is a skill that we work really hard on throughout the year. For this project I will teach the children about precision partner talk to make sure that they are staying on task during the assignment. For instance when we are learning definitions in relation to day and night sky, I will teach them that there will be a member A, a member B, and a member C. Member A will use the word we just defined in a sentence and member B will count the words that they used in their sentence, and Member C will repeat the sentence back to the class. This method keeps the children on task because they have to actively listen to what their group members are saying so that they are prepared to answer my potential question. When I have children work in groups they never know which member they are going to be or which group I am going to call on so they must stay one hundred percent engaged during their work. The assessment of their collaborative work will come naturally when I assess how well they met or made progress towards the standard. They will also be assessed on their final project and the presentation of the final project based on a teacher created rubric. ** Reference  ** Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). //Technology integration for meaningful// //classroom use: A standards-based approach//. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
 * How will you facilitate an authentic collaborative learning experience to promote deeper student engagement with content skills and concepts?﻿  **