Why your question is important
Teachers share the responsibility to help children acquire skills to play and work cooperatively with their peers. I believe that working collaboratively is a skill that will ultimately be responsible for their success in their adult life and work. The skills they acquire in solving problems, being collaborative, learning from others, helping others, taking on the identity of a member of a group/team will have an impact on their success. I agree with the view that our most important responsibility as teachers is to help children be good human beings. We teach them to work as a collaborative community.
How you chose your focal students:
One of the students I chose is the student who had problems working as a team member. He lacked skills to problem solve. The others include one student who is very collaborative, helpful and a good team member. I also look at other students’ data to see how my whole class do as a team.
What data you have gathered (our hope is that by this time you will have at least four pieces of data for each focal student);
I have some video data and the reflective journal that I started mid-year.
What you have learned thus far (about your students learning, the content, your teaching):
It has been a struggle to determine how much students have grown in their identity as being a part of a community of learners just from what I have done in the classroom or what I expect of them. I can observe that they understand that during class meeting, each student gets a turn at sharing, that they have to wait for their turn, that they have the option to pass, that they will get a turn and they have to be patient and not interrupt the person talking, that if they pass they will have an opportunity again if they come up with something to share.
They understand that one of Ray is a selective mute and has different needs and we understand his need to do things differently and we accommodate his needs in every situation. They understand that Ezra is physically challenged and students help with his special needs. They also recognize that Nate needs to sit in the front and leave his spot for him or move when he joins the group. They make available the seat Henry needs in order to focus and respect that. Isn’t that what a community is? Where people recognize the needs of others and work around it? People know that we all have different needs and do what we need to do in that context?
I have learned that it is hard to assess their growth as human beings than it is to assess their growth as readers and writers. It is easier to assess academic growth because you can see that, “Oh now they are doing something that they were not doing a month ago.” How do you make that judgment about their social and moral growth and attribute it directly to what you are doing in class.
How you have changed your teaching based on what you have learned:
Based on my inquiry I am consistently challenging my students to work as a team to achieve goals. I remind them that they are not done until their team is for things that I didn’t before. If students are working as a team on their word sort, I remind them that they are not done until all four students are done which promotes students to help the ones who need extra help, to put their differences aside in order to reach the goal, thus promoting a culture of collectiveness rather than individual gain. You are not ready to be dismissed until your entire table group is done. It promotes helping each other, especially, the ones who need extra help.
What you have noticed about your students’ learning progress around your question:
At this point, I don’t have enough insight into their perception and growth as collaborative problem solvers, team members and community members. I don’t know if they have that identity about themselves and others. I don’t know what I need to teach explicitly, what routines I should have in place, what expectations are realistic to have about what they can understand and learn about working cooperatively. I understand conflict management is a part of working collaboratively. I have come to recognize somewhat reluctantly that conflicts will continue to happen, that they will continue to disagree and fight and annoy each other, that they will do mean, un-thoughtful things to each other, that I cannot expect a complete lack of the behavior that I disapprove of. The goal should be to teach them better problem solving skills, making learning collaborative and mutual, teach them to recognize each others’ needs and strengths and learn from each other.
What you want to do next.
I want to carve out some questions for their reflective journal that will help me move forward in my inquiry. I was hopeful that their reflective journal will help me identify what kinds of things come up for my students around social issues, what they think of as school and classroom community, are there conflicts that I am not hearing about; do they have tools to work together; will they help each other out when someone needs help. How can I help develop empathy towards others?
I would like to identify questions that give insight into their understanding. Are there books that I can use as a launching pad for opening discussions around topics? What literature is out there to help with creating the identity I want them to take on?
