By Matthew Ernst

Collaborative learning and thinking can benefit almost everyone in a classroom. The skills that students gain are so important for their development and for getting them ready for the real world.

You can foster these skills in your classroom by assigning more group assignments, where each member of a team is to work on a specific portion of a project. Make sure they have the tools to communicate outside the classroom. This will do wonders to greatly improve their communicative skills, and you will also be fostering their individual skills to work on their own parts.

Assignments that include group work can consist group discussions, poster boards, and maybe group quizzes such as Kahoot! and Quizlet. All of these will encourage students to trust each other and will increase their efficiency with communicating their ideas and explaining their reasoning.

Given the proper tools, such as Microsoft Excel, Sheets, and Word students will be able to efficiently work together.