In this episode you will learn multiple strategies to support students with the skills they need to be college and career ready; communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity.

What you will get from this episode:

Communication Strategies: 

Strategy #1:  Partner Summary

Strategy #2: Open Ended Question Using AI

Strategy #3: Tiered Communication Opportunities

Five ways to increase communication in your classroom: 

1. Provide students with choices in how they communicate what they know. 
2. Require students to use academic language when they communicate in the classroom. 
3. Increase opportunities for student to share in pairs, small groups and whole class.
4. Ask student open ended questions 
5. Have students participate in a Partner Summary to promote active listening.    

Collaboration Strategies: 

Strategy #4: Classroom Collaboration One Pager  

Three ways to increase collaboration in your classroom: 

1. Increase the amount of time students have to talk with one another by 5 times. 
2. Have students work in group no larger than three to solve problems. 
3. Give students options to work together to teach the class utilizing digital tools. 

Creativity Strategies: 

Strategy #5: Illustrative Vocabulary 

Strategy #6: Choice Boards with Rubrics

Three ways to increase creativity in your classroom: 

1. Give options to your students to show what they know. 
2. Look for ways to infuse creativity in your day to day activities. 
3. Find ways to integrate technology to create not just receive. 

Critical Thinking Strategies: 

Strategy #7: Stump the Teacher

Strategy #8: Share Your Thinking-Metacognitive Best Practices 

Four ways to increase critical thinking in your classroom: 

1. Find ways to challenge your students to solve problems. 
2. Encourage students to share their thinking, and as you are teaching, share your thoughts as you solve problems. 
3. Encourage students to think creatively and to find multiple outcomes to a single problem. 
4. Emphasize the importance of asking questions and set up opportunities for student questions to be utilized in your lesson. 

Episode at a Glance Time Markers:

1:59: Communication 

4:00: Active Listening Strategy 

7:09: Integrating tone, context, and body language into teaching communication 

8:24: 5 Ways to increase communication in your classroom 

9:03: Collaboration 

11:04: Characteristics of an effective team 

15:03: 3 ways to increase collaboration 

18:46 Creativity 

22:35: 3 Ways to increase creativity 

23:01: Critical Thinking 

26:39: 4 ways to increase critical thinking

Episode Transcript:

Episode #4: The Ultimate Classroom Mixtape: Pumping Up the Volume on Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Thinking 

Building Bridges and Blasting Off: Exploring the Power of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity in the Classroom

Hi friends! I am so excited for today’s episode. In this episode we are going to talk about the best strategies to teach the 4 C’s. Now if you have been in education a while you know the 4C’s  Critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, but we are also going to add in how to integrate artificial intelligence into our instruction to enhance the learning process. In this episode you are going to get multiple strategies to take your kids from just having knowledge to using that knowledge at a high level. Isn’t’ this  what teaching is all about. I think we can all agree that teaching these skills is not just something that we need to do because the standards, or department of education has told us to, but instead its what our kids will need in order to be successful for their careers and their futures. Let’s jump in! 

I think when we start with communication, I immediately think of verbal communication. Communication is really the more diverse than that. In order to be considered a good or effective communicator we have to be open and honest, exhibit active listening skills, understand tone and context, and be able to read body language.  In classroom, including my own, I would frequently have students sharing ideas through choral response, or having them share with their partner exactly what I wanted them to say. Although they were talking, this was not teaching them the skill of communicating. I’m sure we have all done this. We start off with great intentions but we want to make sure our kids are sharing the correct information. After all we don’t want them to practice things that are not correct. But in order to really have students communicate effectively we have to let go of some of the control. One shift in the way that we integrate communication into our classroom could be by having students interact in an unscripted way. Instead of asking students a question and having them repeat in choral reading, or echo what the teacher asking an open-ended question gives students the opportunity to take what they had learned and process it, and put it in their own words.  All of your students may not be able to do this, specifically our English Learners who may lack the academic vocabulary, and perhaps our students with disabilities.  Providing the help of a language frame or paragraph frame will enhance their ability to communicate their ideas.  I would provide all of my students a frame for the open ended question, to help them develop their academic language, because they are all academic language learners, and I always felt like it lowered the effective filter giving every student access to what they need to share.   

While creating open ended questions for students to answer and providing a sentence frame can help with their verbal communication and academic language development, while they are talking to one another, we need to teach them active listening skills as well. One of my favorite strategies to promote active listening is a partner summary. As students are sharing their answer to your open ended questions, the role of the person listening is to pay attention to 2 or 3 words or phrase to integrate into a summary. At the end of the sharing opportunity the student that didn’t provide the response would then be asked to share out a summary of their partners answer, and add on. As the teacher, When I have my students sharing, I first have them stand up. One its a change of their physical state, increases blood flow, and oxygen to the brain, physically gets them moving which increases energy, and it gives me the opportunity to move through the groups doing the ear hustle and listening in on their conversations. I want to make sure that they are on the right track and redirect if I have to, I can check in with my students that may need extra support, I can have them move and share with another partner after we discuss a couple of answers from the first response, and I can provide feedback and positive encouragement to my students for their hard work.  Now some content areas lend themselves to these open ended questions a little easier than others, but utilizing a tool like Chat GPT, can save you hours of time.  I was a biology teacher and a lot of my content is process focused. So creating open ended questions could sometimes be difficult. I just went to Chat GPT and asked it to create an open ended question to have students describe the process of photosynthesis. This is the response.

 Can you describe in your own words the step-by-step process of photosynthesis, including the molecules involved and how they interact, and explain how the process contributes to the growth and survival of plants?
I then asked it to produce five more question and bam. 10 seconds later I have 5 more questions.  Oh the power of technology!   And guess what you can do this for math problems too!  I asked, Create an open ended question for solving a system of equations. The response: 

What are the possible methods for solving a system of equations, and how do you determine which method is the most appropriate for a given system of equations?

Oooo this gets me so excited. This takes learning from a passive experience to one that requires students to interact and engage with the content! Its so cool! 

Alright, so partner conversations are one way to integrate active listening and verbal communication in your class, but how do we include tone and context, and body language. We have our student create.  Having student demonstrated different forms of communication to show their learning creates an opportunity to discuss tone, context and body language.   Think about if you are presenting to a class your tone, and the audiences body language can be different. What we are asking our students to demonstrate are those abilities. In addition to presentations students can be communicate through  essays, vlogs, podcasts, advertisements, posters,  instagram stories, the list goes on and on.  Communication skills can be demonstrated through all these avenues, but the power to motivate and engage, is allowing your students to have the choice on how they demonstrate the skill you are looking for.   The more you allow students to have a choice in the type of communication that takes place the more motivated they will be to complete the assignments. Choice is an essential part of well rounded and diverse communication, and effective communication can be practiced across all platforms. 

Here are 5 ways you can increase quality communication in your classroom: 

1. Provide choices of they way in which students communicate what they know.

2. Require students to utilize academic language in their communication within the classroom. A great tech tool for a social media like environment is FlipGrid. Check it out! 

3. Increase opportunities for students to share with pairs, small groups, larger groups, and whole class. 

4. Ask students open ended questions

5. Have students participate in a partner summary to promote active listening. 

Collaboration:

The second most popular C that I find in classrooms is collaboration. Whether it be a structured think-pair-share or a group activity collaboration is happening in classrooms across campuses all over the country. Even though there has been an increase in collaboration the focus is still on the teacher being the person that provides all of the information for the collaboration to happen. Let me explain. I as a teacher am standing at the front of the class delivering a lesson on the Bill of Rights. I am telling my students everything they need to know about the Bill of Rights. When it is time, I let them collaborate on making a poster with examples of The Bill of Rights that I just taught them. Collaboration, you bet. Critical thinking and developing autonomy not so much.  In order to up the ante to develop  collaboration skills we need to think about the activities that we are having our students collaborate around.  But before we get there, lets talk about the characteristics of effective collaboration.   I can almost guarantee that we have all been a part of a team that was dysfunctional. When I think about those experiences they left me feeling frustrated.  I have also been a part of some highly effective teams. In my old organization we would call them taco teams. They are the teams that LOVE to work together, and go out for margaritas after the work day. Recently, I was a part of one of those teams. We were working on developing 5 full days of professional development for teachers, administrators and paraeducators. We had a very very rough outline of what we needed to provide and in an incredibly short amount of time, we created a high quality, engaging experience for those teachers! What made that team so effective were a few things.

 #1 Strong leadership. This does not mean a micro manager.  A strong leader effectively delegates responsibility and helps to highlight the expertise of the members of their team. Additionally, an effective leader will help to remove barriers that inhibit the team’s success. They put TEAM above everyone. My dear dear friend Christine Rich is one of the leaders I have ever met. She is effective at communicating expected outcomes, modeling behavior and exemplifying what it takes to lead a collaborative team in a positive way, trusting the members of the team to carry out a shared vision.  #2  Having a shared focus and common goal. There is power in numbers and cultivating a vision of shared ownership of a common goal supports the camaraderie of the team. Ensuring that all members of the team are moving in the same direction creates a clear understanding of what is to be expected for everyone on the team. 

#3 Clearly defined roles. Once a common goal has been established soldifiying the roles and responsibility for each member of the team creates a shared accountability for the outcome. Although the roles may be defined at the beginning, it does not mean that the individuals are not still working together towards that common goal. Each role is a piece of the puzzle for the intended outcome. 

#4 Effective and Frequent Communication. There’s that communication again. When working with a team, there is a need for frequent and effective communication. This can take many different forms and varies in short term versus long term project. Providing a space for students to work individually and then come back together and communicate on each of their outcomes and their progress ensures accountability for each member and gives the team an opportunity to provide feedback regarding the work. Effective communication within a team lacks judgment and is constructive in nature. Teaching our students language that is supportive and not judgemental and how to appropriately and effectively interact should be a part of developing highly collaborative teams in our classrooms. 

#5 Consistent and enthusiastic effort. Okay you may not always get tons of enthusiasm out of your students to work collaboratively, but it sure does help a team to be successful. Helping everyone on the team to feel as if their role is important and valued can lead to higher levels of enthusiasm and help to ensure consistent effort on the part of all members. 

#6 Shared resources. Man I love me some Google. Google has changed the way collaboration can happen in the classroom. I read a tweet this week from a teacher that was talking about her students sharing a Google Doc to take notes in the class. The students were able to work on the document together and ask and answer questions and interact all in the same doc. They took control of their learning and shared experience. How cool is that. Sharing of resources has never been easier and leveraging platforms like google truly create a more collaborative effort. 

#7 We before me.  All of us have some form or ego when it comes to a skill that we possess. As our students work in collaborative teams, they may need to shed their ego and put the we before the me. Aligning to a common goal or purpose, defining clear roles, sharing and communicating effectively, and sharing resources all aid in fostering the release of the ego to highlight the work of the many vs. the one. 

Laying the foundation for collaboration in  your classroom includes sharing what it means to collaborate and directly teaching your students these seven attributes that you would require for collaboration in your class. Personally, I wouldn’t lecture on this topic, I would create a gallery walk that asks students different questions about what it means to be a part of an effective team allowing them to discuss and then answer on a poster.  At the end of the discussion and walk, then I would provide the students with some sort of article, text, or infographic where they could read and highlight the components from the article that aligned to the answers of their questions.  I would then provide a one-pager for the collaboration expectations in the class, and have them review it and provide feedback. If the class agrees to these components then we would adopt it as our tool for group and collaborative activities. I will provide a link with a freebie for that Collaborative Classroom One Pager in the show notes. 

When we think of creating classroom activities that foster collaboration  providing your students with the opportunity to do that collaborate prior to receiving the instruction could be a great way to increase the academic discourse between students.  Like with the example above in rolling out the collaboration expectations, giving the students the opportunity to activate their prior knowledge and experiences with each other primes their brain for when you want to get to the topic for them to learn.  Additionally, in the example for the Bill of Rights, having your students to think for themselves and develop their own bill of rights, increases the conversations, and critical thinking around what those rights mean.  Students then take ownership of their learning instead of just copying information. Simply integrating collaboration and inquiry increases the likelihood of critical thinking taking place and the collaboration becomes a more academic discussion not regurgitation. 

Here are 3 ways to increase collaboration in your class: 

1. Increase the time students spend talking to each other 5x more than what you currently do.

2. Provide opportunities to work in groups no larger than 3 to solve problems not just regurgitate information. 

3. Give students options on developing expertise together and teaching the class. Allow them to use the digital tools.

Creativity: 

As a creative, this one really excites me. I actually think, my future digital course might be in helping teacher enhance their creativity with lesson design. Let me know if that would be something that you are interested in.  What I find is that teachers allow kids to utilize creativity on culminating projects, but don’t necessarily plan creative lessons. 

One of my favorite activities that I used to do as a teacher was called Illustrative Vocabuarly. If you have ever seen word world on PBS, this is kind of what I asked my kids to do.  On this show, everything in the show is created using the letters of the word for that item. So for example a house, would be drawn with the letter HOUSE. A dog wold be illustrated with DOG.   What  I required my students to do was to draw the meaning of their vocabulary words.  I chose may be 10 words from the unit, and then randomly selected my students and they each chose 3 words from the list. So the maximum number of kids working on any one word was 3.  So, if the word was adaptation my students had to write the word, using the definition of adaptation to symbolize what the word meant. I will provide an example in the show notes but essentially  I would draw the word and color the word adaptation to look like tiger stripes hiding in the grass so it would be camouflaged.  Once they created their 3 drawings. I grouped then would have them do a partner activity where they would find a partner and share their three words and drawing, and the other person would have to guess what the word meant. The artist would then share the actual definition.  This allowed for my students to be creative. And took what could be a very monotonous vocabulary activity and transformed it, into a higher level thinking skill that required them to analyze the meaning of the words and find a way to represent them visually. Look for ways to infuse more creativity into the tasks that are redundant. If you are not inherently creative, ask your creative students for ideas on what they would want to do to demonstrate their understanding. 

Teaching creativity allows students to take ownership in their learning. A lot has changed in the 20 years since I have been in high school and entrepreneurship and free lance work is at an all time high for millenials. How did those students create some amazing industries if they always thought inside the four walls of the classroom.  In any instance where you can provide a rubric of the content requirements that you are looking for but allow for autonomy in how the students demonstrate their knowledge, DO IT!!! Give kids the freedom to think outside the box. And give yourself the freedom to find ways to creatively provide instructional opportunities for your students. 

Here are 3 ways to increase creativity: 

1. Give students options on how they show what they know. 

2. Look for ways to infuse more creativity in your day to day activities. 

3. Find ways to integrate technology. 

Critical Thinking: 

As a teacher that was classically trained, releasing the reins and allowing the kids to think and solve problems was an area that I worked really hard to develop. This is the area that I find to be the weakest in most teachers when I do walk throughs.  Critical thinking skills are developed through students demonstrating an understanding of a topic and then solving problems related to that topic while developing arguments to support their accuracy. This is not only a challenge because it requires high order thinking skills but it is also a challenge because it is difficult to determine what is real information versus opinion on the internet. The key to developing critical thinking in your classroom is by providing problems that your students need to solve using the information that they acquired. If an answer can be googled, it is not a critical thinking question. Critical thinking is really implemented when students apply the information that they know in new ways. One great strategy for teaching kids critical thinking skills is called Stump the Teacher. The goal of this activity is for students to develop a question related to a piece of content that stumps their teacher. (metaphorically of course).  After presenting a chunk of content have students develop a unique question designed to stump you. They want their question to include important vocabulary, or processes that they need to know. Once they have developed their question they then share with their partner and choose which one is more difficult. You then have the partners share with a quad and they choose which question they think is going to stump the teacher. Then you have the quads share with another quad creating a group of 8, and they discuss the questions and choose one to represent their group. And so on, until you have one question standing. Not only does this require student to think to build their own question, but they have interact and decide what question incorporates enough of the learning to really stump their teacher. And it includes, communication, collaboration, and creativity! Boom! 

Another one of my favorite favorite things that I did as a teacher was have my students design their own labs. Cookie cutter labs that have step by step instruction are fine, and they produce data that kids need to be able to analyze and explain, and their is definitely a place for them, but whenever I had a topic that I could have my students create their own lab I did it! They would have to develop their question, identify their variables, their controls, how they were going to collect their data, what data they were going to collect. This process required metacognition. They had to think about their thinking, and how they were going to find an answer to their problem. These were so challenging for my student but man they provided so many critical thinking skills. 

Here are 3 ways to increase critical thinking in your classroom : 

1. Challenge students to find ways to solve problems. 

2. Encourage students to articulate their thinking, and share your thinking of how you solve problems. 

3. Encourage students to think creatively and generate multiple outcomes to a problem. 

4. Emphasize the importance of asking questions. 

Bottom  line is that integrating communication, creativity and collaboration can lead to higher levels of critical thinking. Classroom that incorporate these components will have engaged, motivated students, that are active participants in their learning. And it makes for such a fun environment. I get goosebumps thinking about my students engaging in these activities. If you try any of these activities, take a video, or send me a dm! I would love to hear about it.  And don’t forget to hop over to the show notes for the Collaborative Classroom One Pager and their maybe some other free resources there that you might want to grab from this episode. I hope you loved this topic as much as I did,. If you can take a moment to rate, review or subscribe I would really appreciate. Bye for now and Happy Teaching!