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Building positive group work ethics in project-based learning Teach_Tec 4 Nov 2011 8:59 AM 0 Can you think of a job or profession that is done alone? No co-workers to consult, no team responsible for contributing different pieces of a project, no meetings (well, maybe that might be okay ; ) It's hard to come up with many. Artist? Author? (at least during the initial writing process). We could probably come up with a few more, but the list is relatively short. Working in teams, collaborating with others in our work and life is fundamental. Not only do we gain social benefits, but the ability to combine the strengths of a team most often leads to a better end result. Though we've all heard that initial reaction from students as a group project is introduced: 'Can we pick our own groups?' or even worse, 'Do I have to be with him/her?' The skills of working effectively in groups need to be coached, practiced and encouraged. So when you see reflective comments such as these (from real students) it is encouraging: "A good team looks like a team that is on task, getting along and sharing." (5th grade) "A good team looks like a friendly team with members working together. I have learned practical skills that will help me get a job." (5th grade) "A good team looks and sounds like they are working together, improvising, compromising, discussing ideas calmly and working out disagreements." (6th grade) "In the real world you may have to work with people you do not like and you need to know how to still be productive." (6th grade) So how did these students get here? Pauline Roberts, a 5th and 6th grade teacher at the Birmingham Covington School in Bloomfield Hills, MI has made developing these skills a priority. The unique program she and her colleagues have collaborated on at this 3rd - 8th grade public school is called ENGAGE. The focus is to embed 21st century skills across multiple grades and all parts of the curriculum with a specific

On this site, you will find several hundred pages of information describing the flow of history, from the evolutionary processes that formed our bodies, to the forces of globalization that exploded in the 1990s. It is detailed, engaging reading-the result of over 25 years of continuous refinement for actual classroom use. Reading about a period will fill your head with facts and names about your chosen topic like any good history textbook. But you won't remember the important lessons-the ones that history classes exist in order to teach us, so that we don't each have to learn them on our own. Good students studying traditional History texts learn much about the past, but even the best rarely take the lessons of the past with them when they leave class. As a history teacher at University High School in Urbana, Illinois since 1979, I have developed a method for teaching history, using a series of about 200 cross-referenced flowcharts and over 100 powerpoint multimedia lecture outlines to help students see history as a dynamic process of causes and effects, not just a meaningless list of names and dates. With this website you can help bring about a revolution in the History classroom, producing students that deeply understand the past and enjoy learning about it. » printer-friendly version