Teacher Collaboration

Updated TQS 2A: A teacher engages in career-long professional learning and ongoing
critical reflection to improve teaching and learning.

-collaborating with other teachers to build personal and collective professional capacities
and expertise.

As a beginning teacher, I started this school year with many ideas of different ways I
wanted to teach grade 3, many of which had come from pinterest. Of course, I soon
realized that what you want to do, what works for your students and what you actually
have time for doesn't always match up. Having the opportunity to work with my mentor
teacher and others who have more experience in a specific subject was incredibly helpful
in helping me tailor my lessons to be more engaging and beneficial to my students. By
sharing my ideas and asking for feedback I feel my teaching has improved compared to
the beginning of the year.

Having the chance to collaborate with coworkers who have either more or different
experiences with teaching can be very rewarding and informative. I believe it is important
for teachers to share their experiences in the classroom and to collaborate not just with
those at their grade level but others as well. During the school year, I reached out to some
teachers in other grades to get other opinions and advice, every time I have come away
with something I can use or an idea to try.  More than once I have gone to pick something
up from the printer, seen an interesting assignment or lesson waiting to be picked up from
another teacher, and got an idea to use in my class or I’ve also made a copy of it for myself.

I think the following piece from an article I found explains teacher collaboration the best.

Benefits of Teacher Collaboration

When teachers come together to share information, resources, ideas, and expertise,

learning becomes more accessible and effective for students. Collaborating means

purposefully building interpersonal relationships and working towards healthy

interdependence, which occurs when teachers are comfortable giving and receiving

help without forfeiting accountability.

When we get teachers co-planning and co-teaching based on a shared vision, here
are some of the benefits we can expect:

• Increased Academic Effort—Since teachers who collaborate on instruction

are all on the same page, they can increase the level of academic rigor to match

the core competencies they want students to meet.

• Increased Understanding of Student Data—Teachers are better equipped

to deconstruct relevant data (and implement effective solutions) from both
formative and summative assessments. They also have a sense of shared
responsibility for celebrating success and analyzing failure.

• More Creative Lesson Plans—When teachers communicate and share ideas,

they also share an enlarged repertoire of instructional strategies that encourage

creative instruction. Colleagues may be influenced to try different approaches or

have opportunities to help a peer with a new approach.  

• Less Teacher Isolation—While teachers should not feel forced to collaborate to

avoid any “contrived congeniality,” having the opportunity to share ideas and information
combats professional loneliness and frustration which improves staff morale and professional
satisfaction.

The best part about the benefits of teacher collaboration is that they can be a reality—as they are in so
many learning communities around the world. The key is acknowledging, understanding, and working
diligently to overcome the challenges and obstacles standing in the way of high-quality teacher collaboration.

https://www.schoology.com/blog/teacher-collaboration-how-approach-it-2018

Establishing Criteria in Writing

I had been feeling fairly ineffective when it came to writing this year. In order to address this area of struggle, Erin and I decided to create a writing unit to help guide students in a step-by-step writing process.

A key part of this unit was a focus on establishing criteria. While this isn't groundbreaking work, it was something that was lacking in my writing instruction and has already had some significant impact on my students.

To begin, we introduced a rubric that is posted on a prominent bulletin board.



Afterwards we introduced how the rubric works, using keywords that appear throughout the guide, as well as levels of achievement that match our reporting terms: Exemplary, Proficient, Developing and Beginning.

Once students had some familiarity with how the scoring guide was used, we marked one story together, the students were then put to work and asked to score an exemplar. Many of my students surprised me. After only one short lesson and group practice they had already begun accurately scoring the story and were using the same key terminology in their discussions that appears in the rubric. Though there is lots of work to be done, I have a feeling that using this throughout the school year that my students will become even stronger at assessing their work and work of their peers.
They were even beginning to assess and score storybooks that we were reading aloud in class using the writing rubric.

To finish, I have already had a brainwave (careful, this doesn't happen too often) and am looking forward to applying this practice throughout my writing units and teaching skills like self-assessment and peer-conferencing in the next few months and next year.