Collaborative Activity
Teachers and students collaborate in a small group on a joint activity to develop tangible (e.g., a chart, essay, report, list of ideas shared) and intangible products (e.g., a shared understanding, co-construction of ideas, or discovering solutions) in order to explore ideas, foster shared reasoning, and construct meaning together.
Classroom Examples
Note: Scores not included
2a: Teacher Creates Opportunities for Joint Activity
Teacher consistently asks students to comment on each other’s ideas and also encourages overall collaboration
The teacher and all students work together on one board and learn from and with one another
T: “I’m asking, ‘how many twos are we gonna get in twelve rolls?’ What do you think we’re gonna fill in for probability?”
Teacher fills in the ratio box using student input
The use of 1 board encourages collaboration toward the product
This collaborative activity includes an intangible learning product (the conversation the students and teacher have leads to a shared understanding of the mathematical concept) with a tangible product (the completion of the ratio box by taking turns rolling the dice to determine experimental probability)
2b: Teacher Orients to Others’ Ideas
Teacher asks students to respond to their peers’ ideas
T: “So what are you gonna be doing, Destin?” / Multiple Ss respond. / T: “To find what kind of probability?” … T: “Which one do you think it is, Emily? If he rolls the dice, is it gonna be theoretical or experimental?”
2c: Teacher Positions Self as Learner
Teacher primes students to use prior knowledge to gain new understandings
T: “What does theory mean in science?” … T: “It’s like an idea.” / S: “Their educated guess.” / T: “Right. Educated guess, that’s even better.”
Teacher guides students in discussing their knowledge and understanding of the topic so they are able to discuss the “why”
Teacher uses guiding questions and follow-up questions
Examples of T’s follow-up questions: “Why do you say that?”; “Where did your numbers come in?”; “What did we use?”
2d: Teacher Integrates Student Contributions
After acknowledging student contributions, the teacher reincorporates those ideas into the next part of the conversation
T: “So we never actually rolled the dice, right? We just thought about it. So what do you think experimental probability’s gonna be?”
Teacher integrates students’ contributions to move discussion forward
T: “So all this is is our ratio box, but our special ratio, like Destin said, was probability today.”
Teacher responds to students’ ideas
S: “Is it just like a hypothesis?” / T: “Yeah. Which one would be like a hypothesis?” / S: “The theoretical. And then the experimental is we have to find it out if it’s true.” / T: “Beautiful.”
2e: Students Construct Ideas Together and Share Ownership
All students contribute to conversation and build on one another’s ideas
Students are consistently on-task for both the tangible (rolling dice) and the intangible (discussion) aspects of the activity
Students are responsive to teacher questioning and appear comfortable participating in small group discussion with and without teacher prompting
Students are respectful of and receptive to peers’ viewpoints
Students appear engaged and enthusiastic
Overlapping speech is a natural speech pattern for Hawaiʻi students. It is viewed as a positive aspect of this conversation showing that the students are comfortable and eager to participate in this small group discussion setting