According to John Hattie's ongoing studies examining factors and their relation to achievement, the use of collaborative learning strategies are consistently related to high achievement in the classroom. These strategies, including jigsaw, think-pair-share, and socratic discourse, help to reorganize the classroom from where a teacher solely imparts knowledge to students to a community of learners where students learn from the experiences and ideas from one another. Focusing on collaboration not only helps to foster diverse thinking, but also helps to reduce deficiencies in under-performing students while also benefiting high-achieving students by allowing opportunities of peer mentoring and differentiated instruction. Furthermore, collaborative learning strategies better prepare our students for a workforce that is increasingly diverse and collaborative in accomplishing its objectives.
A student's grade should not reflect how they behaved in a classroom, nor should it be reflected by a single summative assessment. Instead, students should be evaluated on their ability to meet the objective or standard with consistency. This means allowing students multiple opportunities to showcase their mastery of the material through consistent assessments. Students, like all of us, have bad days, so why should we penalize them for the circumstances of an individual day. Using frequency-based grading or other similar means of capturing student mastery allows for grades that reflect their developed ability instead of "completion grades." Making clear what is expected of students, while also giving students a clear, developed rubric, affords them the opportunity to develop proficiency without confusion as to the measurement of that proficiency.
No student should be bored with learning. But given that all students do not learn in a uniform fashion, giving opportunities for students to learn through visual, kinesthetic, and auditory modes in addition to reading and writing increases students' potential mastery. Mastery is commensurate with students' sense of achievement, and encourages students to personally own their education. Furthermore, lessons should be related to real word scenarios by examining application or practicality of objectives. Providing a "so what" gives lessons a pragmatism absent in lessons lacking clear objectives. Also, class time is not a time to listen to the teacher, but is a time to achieve clear objectives through engaging the thoughts of their peers in a variety of learning styles. In other words, our students need the opportunity to be involved in their own education.
Given that student attention spans rarely exceed 10-15 minutes, lessons should be designed to accommodate students ability to retain and master material. Instead of lecturing for 50 minutes, creating mini-lessons to teach core concepts that are followed by student application creates an immediate and hands on experience of learning. Removing the teacher form the front of the classroom allows time to conference and formatively assess, both helping to differentiate lesson plans to help all students reach proficiency. Moreover, breaking lessons into mini-lessons lends to scaffolded instruction, where each mini-lesson may build upon the last for difficult concepts. It is also important for teachers to model the behavior and work required in the classroom. Reading and writing in front of the classroom, as well as evaluating mentor texts such as texts by their peers or by established authors, is necessary in guiding students through the process of composition or other ELA concept. Exposure to an expert's process affords students valuable insight into their own process, which then can be built upon by a teacher who has allocated time to work with and develop their students.