TEACHER COLLABORATION RESOURCES AND STRATEGIES
Teachers in order to help effectiveness and impact students need collaboration resources and strategies. Berry, Daughtry, and Wieder (2003), 68% of teachers go to other teachers when they need help and support.
RESOURCES
Articles to benefit Teachers Collaboration:
An article by Henry and Rosemary Wong (2011) Learning Objectives: The heart of every lesson; indicates how in lessons teachers can use various learning objectives. In teacher collaboration often times lesson planning is discussed and how to incorporate learning objectives. The article covers the following components of learning intentions and criteria for success:
1. Challenge
2. Commitment
3. Confidence
4. Conceptual Understanding
I have attached other articles that cover these same ideas and principles that would be beneficial during collaboration.
STRATEGIES
Weekly meetings in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are great for collaboration and to plan future lessons. The PLC's are great places to discuss learning intentions and criteria for success components.
.Its a time to also meet vertically with other grades to discuss what and how they are teaching the subject; it also provies a great way to get/give ideas on how to teach subjects.
Creating professional development opportunities either in person or online. Sharing knowledge is a wonderful way to colloborate with teachers.
Using technology is a wonderful way to make teacher collaboration time-efficient. There are several types of technologies to use for these endeavors.
Google Drive: anything that is created or uploaded onto Google Drive can be shared with just about anyone. Creating roadmaps on Google Drive is fantastic way of sharing a document so that everyone can view and/or edit the roadmap together. It is a great way at ensuring that everyone is on the same page and following the curriculum because everyone only needs to look in one spot to find the collective document. Google Drive can be used for everything: PLCs, roadmaps, backwards maps, sharing files, etc. It is a great way to continue collaboration outside of meeting times as well since the document can be accessed from any computer with internet.
Google Classroom is a great resource for sharing classes of students and assignments with other teachers. Teachers who teach the same subject or grade can share classroom and assignments that students submit. This allows for teachers to to align their instruction horizontally.
MoveNote: Use this application to record meetings. If someone is not keeping notes or using a document of Google Drive, you can use MoveNote to record the meeting. This will allow for teachers to go back and listen to the meeting again in case they forgot something that was discussed. This also helps save time if there is not anyone there to take notes because everyone is participating in the meeting.
REFERENCES
Berry, B., Daughtrey, A., Wieder, A., & Center for Teaching Quality. (2009). Collaboration: Closing the effective teaching gap. Center for Teaching Quality. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED509717.pdf
Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Want to Close the Achievement Gap? Close the Teaching Gap. American Educator, 38(4), 14-18.
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York, NY: Routledge.
Poulos, J., Culberston, N., Piazza, P., & D'entremont, C. (2014). Making space: The value of teacher collaboration. Education Digest, 80(2), 28.
Wong, H., & Wong, R. (2011, March). Learning objectives: The heart of every lesson.