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I am wondering how other are working on collaboration & communication both with students and colleagues. We know that these skills are important for our students and for our own professional learning. i am just curious about what is happening in the field in different parts of the country. Kathy

With the Common Core Standards coming out, my grade level and I have really been taking a closer look at how we can bump up our instruction. We are putting together grade-level assessments so that all teachers assess students the same way in the end. However, how you get your students to that end is up to you. We are trying to be consistent and yet not so regimented that the creativity and art of teaching is taken away. Our assessments are sometimes a written format, but not always. Sometimes we prepare a final project with our intended standards embedded. What has been nice is that because we all have the same goal in mind, we will all teach to the same level of rigor. We won't necessarily teach the exact same way or even the same lessons. Our assessment drives our instruction though! It has really helped us to be more aligned as a grade level and to integrate more reading and science or writing and science. Without integrations, Common Core is going to be tough to meet.

Hi Denise, I'm glad that you highlighted the importance of integrating subjects. With the Common Core coming on board, I'm finding lots of new ways to integrate across subjects to create lessons that meet the standards in several different curricular areas. One thing that I've found is that integrating subjects helps me students understand the relevancy of the topics we learn in each subject. Instead of having separate "blocks" of instruction, I now have areas of instruction that flow together. Kathy, I've been trying to come up with better ways to incorporate student collaboration into my lesson. Generally, I tend toward small group work for collaboration, but can't wait to hear great collaboration ideas from other teachers. Thanks for starting the discussion! Maureen

This is an interesting thread, as of lately we have found collaborating to be more accessible due to the common core and an active environment among colleagues to find a way to relate all topics within each content area. What has certainly helped is the ability to incorporate a ton of STEM units, which actually incorporate Social Studies, Language Arts, Music, and even PE. The difficulties I find is the time to collaborate.

Collaboration is always an issue when there are only 24 hours in a day. Unfortunately, we do way too much communication through email which does not reveal tone and can be easily misunderstood. We are finally at a stage where one of our early release days each month allows us to meet with a PLC of our choice to share ideas across topics we care passionately about. Our PLC choices included technology, parent involvement, PBIS- Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, Advisory which is like homeroom, and a couple of others that escape me at the moment. I work really hard using Web 2.0 tools to help students with their collaborative efforts. So far, it is a challenge trying to find one that is user friendly for all.

Hi Sandy, Arlene, and other posters, As Sandy and Arlene highlighted, much of our communication takes place in the digital world. The majority of my daily communication consists of email and texting in snippets information. Like Sandy pointed out, many times it's hard to tell the tone or to pick up on verbal cues when we use email. I think these are things that we really need to consider when we are collaborating with colleagues and when we assign online collaboration assignments for our students. Also, since communication continues to trend this way, it is important that we teach our students to use these tools effectively and to learn how to communicate benefit of verbal and non-verbal cues. I'm not familiar with the Web 2.0 tools, so I took a few minutes to research them. I think they look like a fantastic tool to help online collaboration. How do schools that use tools like these ensure equal access to technology? Maureen