Collaboration is a critical 21st-century skill students need for academic and professional success, but often, we educators, launch into a collaborative project and expect students to intuitively know how to collaborate effectively. Let’s face it, collaboration is challenging for fully grown humans but even more so for humans whose brains are still under construction. Here are some ideas you can easily and quickly add to your classroom to help students collaborate.
Finding WE Ideas
Yes Game!
Make an offer like “Be Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk and climb the beanstalk.” Everyone says, “yes!” then they do the suggestion. They must say yes, but how they say yes is up to them.
Yes, Yes it Is!
Everyone stands in a semi circle. Place and imaginary object in front of the group. Each member adds a detail followed by everyone saying, “Yes, yes, it is!”
One Word at a Time
Students sit or stand in a circle. They create a story one word at a time. They must say yes to what came before and then add their idea. At the end have the students say, “We did that!”
Shape Shifters
Place participants in groups of 4-5. Give an offer of an object and the group collaborates to create the object with their bodies. They may not talk, they must do it in three seconds or less.
Collaborative Draw!
Pass around one piece of paper. Each person adds one thing (a line, a shape, a detail) to the picture. At the end show the picture to the group. Have them all point to the drawing and say, “We did that!”
YeSand Castles
Pair students up. Have them take turns adding details to their collaborative sand castles.
Collaborative Writing!
Have one student write the first sentence or paragraph. Pass the paper to another student and have them add a sentence or paragraph. Read the final product and have the students say, “We did that!”
We Idea Hat!
Have students write down their idea fold it up and put it in the hat. When they put it in the hat, they must say, “That’s a we idea!”
Sounds Good to Me
Two person scenes where one is free to say whatever they want and the second is confined to saying, “Sounds good to me.”
Story Spine
Have 4-7 students stand in front of the group. Get a main character from the audience. The students create a story one sentence at a time by finishing these sentence starters: Once upon time… Everyday… Until one day… Because of that… Because of that… Until finally… And ever since that…