Professional+Collaborations


 * Professional collaborations (work with colleagues) can support children's learning greatly. As teachers we will be able to collaborate with our grade level teachers to develop strategies and ideas of how to teach our students. This can benefit student's learning because each teacher has their strengths and weaknesses so being able to work with others will help you build on your weaknesses and demonstrate your strengths. For example if I'm teaching a unit on measurement and I didn't feel comfortable enough with content to teach, I could get ideas from other professionals in my grade level on how to instruct measurement. Professional collaborations aide in children's learning because by helping each other out our students will be learning the content in the most effective ways possible from a teacher that knows the most effective ways to instruct the content. Another way professional collaborations is beneficial is when teachers collaborate the share different strategies and materials to instruct a certain lesson. For example in my cooperating classroom my teacher Miss Ray talked to her co-worker Mrs. Walling when the students were not getting addition with regrouping. Mrs. Walling told Miss Ray that she should use her Digi- blocks to teach the students that were struggling with addition with regrouping so they could visually see why regrouping is necessary with the Digi-blocks. Then Miss Ray used Mrs. Walling materials in a small group lesson with the students that were struggling the Digi-blocks seemed to help the students understand the purpose or start to understand the purpose of regrouping. This is an excellent example of how collaborations between professionals helps support student's learning. Since Miss Ray was having trouble getting through to some students about regrouping she went to a co-worker who was able to help and supply materials that worked with this particular lesson in her classroom.**