Encouraging Collaboration in your ESL Classroom

We are going to start off today’s blog post with your reflection question. How are you encouraging collaboration with your Language Learners? Take a moment to reflect on this question. Think about this question and answer to yourself honestly where you stand. 

I think a lot of us have been there or experienced the dread that can come over students when we ask them to work together. You can hear the collective sighs and eye rolls. 

Every year of my teaching career, I have truly wanted my students to have an authentic collaboration experience. One where they are eager to work with each other on assignments and tasks. A lot of times in my lessons this has been more of an afterthought. I just simply say things such as “Get in a group.” 

This was leading to a huge resistance that looked like silence, absolutely no participation from the students, and me wasting time on rants about why working as a group is extremely important. 

Last year during virtual learning I reached my breaking point. After some serious reflection, I knew that I was not setting the students up for success when it came to actively collaborating with other students. 

In my mind, I assumed the students knew how to collaborate. That they were aware of how it looked and sounded. I realized very quickly my assumption was wrong. Therefore, I started to model the behaviors I wanted to see my students using in their collaboration circles. I noticed I started to get more active participation from the students once they were clear on the behaviors they should be having in the circles. 

I also knew the students needed roles for the collaboration groups. Even if I was asking for a simple turn and talk. On my presentation slides, I create roles and responsibilities so the students can refer to them during turn and talk. For more in depth collaborations such as literature circles, I define those roles clearly for the students. 

I also became more intentional in my lesson planning to include consistent and constant collaboration throughout my lessons. I realized before that it was more of an afterthought. By including it in my lesson plans, I was becoming more intentional in my collaboration planning. 

Remember to not make any assumptions about your students’ knowledge on collaboration. Take the time to model your expectations around how it looks and sounds to collaborate with classmates. 

Create roles and responsibilities for students in group roles. This will allow students to have a clear understanding of their responsibilities in the groups. 

While you are lesson planning, plan your collaboration strategies into your lessons. This will also encourage you to be more consistent. 

I realize that these are a lot of strategies. Start today small and then work yourself up. Take one of the strategies I shared today and implement them in your classroom.

How are you being intentional with your collaboration strategies with your Language Learners? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

Download the transcript to this episode here.