Collaboration is when two or more people come together and work to produce something.

Having students collaborate and work with their peers can improve a lot of different aspects in the students life. This article allowed me to delve deeper and understand why collaboration is so important for students.

One of the most important things to understand about collaboration is that it takes time. You cant expect to sit students down in a group and have them work together immediately. Some students have never worked in a group or do not like to work in a group. Getting them used to working together is going to take a lot of trial and error as well as patience. After reading the article I would suggest having students work on little projects and work them up to bigger things. Start off the students by pairing them with a partner or two and then have them sort M&M’s by color, after that is done they can start working on bigger projects such as puzzles, worksheets, crafts, and assignments.

A few steps to take to enforce collaboration among students

Create group agreements

If you start off by giving your students ideals and rules to follow from the beginning they will more likely be able to use these rules every single time they collaborate as well as set boundaries for you and your students so no one is questioning how they should be behaving and what they should be doing.

Teach Compromise

Making compromises are a huge part in any group activity or relationship. It would be great to teach students that sometimes the ideas that they have may not be used but others will. This will show them that the idea they had was not bad there were just others that could have also been used. Once a student understands that compromises need to happen in order to work together in a group there will be less arguments between them.

The importance of brain power

Showing these students that they can learn so much more and be much more productive when they put their minds together to brainstorm and create ideas will make them so excited to start working in groups. A good idea would be to encourage them to work together to get a puzzle done or working together to come up with 5 or more ideas.

It is so important for students to be learning and getting used to collaborating with others. The earlier these students learn the better it will be for them in the future. When I was growing up I used to this collaboration was not fun because I was never taught about what could come from it. Once these students learn and realize that collaborating with other can improve their knowledge as well as allow them to make friends and open up their opinions on topics, they will be astonished and want to work with others all the time!

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