Creating A Safe Learning Environment

Deeper Learning: A collaborative classroom is key to teach students how to listen and ask good questions with exercises designed to scaffold deep, meaningful collaboration. Students gathered at a table engaged in a high-level task, discussing, possibly debating an issue, making shared decisions, and designing a product that demonstrates all this deeper learning.

As teachers, we’d love to see this right out of the gate, but this sort of sophisticated teamwork takes scaffolding. It won’t just happen by placing students together with a piece of provocative text or an engaging task. So how do we begin this scaffolded journey?

• Establish group agreements

• Teach to listen

• Teach the art of asking good questions

• Teach how to negotiate

• Model what we expect

• Group brain power