In a world that is rapidly changing and evolving, collaboration has become a critical 21st century skill for career and life success. Workspaces in the future, as well as many current workspaces, require participants to collaborate seamlessly in the physical and virtual worlds with people spread across the world. Skills and mindsets like working respectfully with diverse teams, listening carefully, self advocating politely, flexibility, willingness to compromise, assume shared responsibility and value individual contributions are vital to working well in teams. This type of sophisticated teamwork takes practice and reinforcement over years. Collaboration Routines practiced in the classroom like frequent opportunities for teamwork, stimulating engagement through a provocative text or interesting task, setting common norms for collaboration [eg: one person speaks at a time, listen to each idea, no put-downs etc], activities to practice active listening, asking good questions, negotiating skills [patience, flexibility, thinking under pressure], conflict resolution tactics etc can offer sufficient practice in these skills from an early age, so that they eventually become easy and intuitive.Read More
Collaboration Routines
In a world that is rapidly changing and evolving, collaboration has become a critical 21st century skill for career and life success. Workspaces in the future, as well as many current workspaces, require participants to collaborate seamlessly in the physical and virtual worlds with people spread across the world. Skills and mindsets like working respectfully with diverse teams, listening carefully, self advocating politely, flexibility, willingness to compromise, assume shared responsibility and value individual contributions are vital to working well in teams. This type of sophisticated teamwork takes practice and reinforcement over years. Collaboration Routines practiced in the classroom like frequent opportunities for teamwork, stimulating engagement through a provocative text or interesting task, setting common norms for collaboration [eg: one person speaks at a time, listen to each idea, no put-downs etc], activities to practice active listening, asking good questions, negotiating skills [patience, flexibility, thinking under pressure], conflict resolution tactics etc can offer sufficient practice in these skills from an early age, so that they eventually become easy and intuitive.Read More
Public Scrutiny
Public Scrutiny is a form of assessment where students' work is reviewed by an external audience: the parent community, subject experts, professionals or teachers and students from other grade levels. Such interactions give students the chance to present an idea or a product to a new audience, get feedback, self-advocate and develop public speaking and presentation skills. It helps students test the relevance of their idea, product or solution in a larger context than just their classroom.Read More
Public Scrutiny
Public Scrutiny is a form of assessment where students' work is reviewed by an external audience: the parent community, subject experts, professionals or teachers and students from other grade levels. Such interactions give students the chance to present an idea or a product to a new audience, get feedback, self-advocate and develop public speaking and presentation skills. It helps students test the relevance of their idea, product or solution in a larger context than just their classroom.Read More
Peer Scrutiny
Peer Scrutiny is a form of assessment where students' work is reviewed by other students of the same age group, generally classmates. It is a powerful tool for meta-cognition and developing intra-personal and inter-personal skills. Peer scrutiny can help students develop the ability to offer critical, thoughtful feedback, reflect on feedback and suggestions received, listen attentively, think critically and work in co-operation with others. As they grow more proficient, students often collaborate with the instructor in identifying parameters for assessment and formulating the assessment rubric. Such active participation in assessment helps students gain more ownership of their own learning rather than feeling on the passive, receiving end of assessment.Read More
Peer Scrutiny
Peer Scrutiny is a form of assessment where students' work is reviewed by other students of the same age group, generally classmates. It is a powerful tool for meta-cognition and developing intra-personal and inter-personal skills. Peer scrutiny can help students develop the ability to offer critical, thoughtful feedback, reflect on feedback and suggestions received, listen attentively, think critically and work in co-operation with others. As they grow more proficient, students often collaborate with the instructor in identifying parameters for assessment and formulating the assessment rubric. Such active participation in assessment helps students gain more ownership of their own learning rather than feeling on the passive, receiving end of assessment.Read More
Assessment for Learning
Almost all learning can be assessed, but some of the most valuable kinds of learning are difficult to quantify. Standardized tests are just one method of assessing student learning. When coupled with various types of formative, summative, performance-oriented and authentic context review opportunities, assessment can become a powerful tool 'for learning' and not merely as a measure 'of learning'. Comprehensive, authentic assessment can be a learning experience in itself, and records not just what students have learnt, but how they think and problem-solve.Read More
Assessment for Learning
Almost all learning can be assessed, but some of the most valuable kinds of learning are difficult to quantify. Standardized tests are just one method of assessing student learning. When coupled with various types of formative, summative, performance-oriented and authentic context review opportunities, assessment can become a powerful tool 'for learning' and not merely as a measure 'of learning'. Comprehensive, authentic assessment can be a learning experience in itself, and records not just what students have learnt, but how they think and problem-solve.Read More
Assessment for Learning
Almost all learning can be assessed, but some of the most valuable kinds of learning are difficult to quantify. Standardized tests are just one method of assessing student learning. When coupled with various types of formative, summative, performance-oriented and authentic context review opportunities, assessment can become a powerful tool 'for learning' and not merely as a measure 'of learning'. Comprehensive, authentic assessment can be a learning experience in itself, and records not just what students have learnt, but how they think and problem-solve.Read More
Making Learning Visible
The MLV framework evolved as a collaboration between Project Zero at Harvard and educators from Reggio Emilia [Italy]. Making Learning Visible is an effort to create and celebrate a culture of learning and democracy within the classroom and school-wide. MLV uses documentation of student work and work-in-progress as the main tool to make evident, shape and record how and what we learn. Documentation done under the MLV framework is distinct from mere display of student work in a few crucial ways: it includes a question about learning, is shared with students, includes teachers' reflections and analysis, involves more than one medium and serves as a tool for further evaluation, reflection and learning.Read More
