Beneve Educational Consulting

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Why Should Teacher Candidates and Educators be trained in Community Building and Cooperative Learning Strategies?

Effective community building and cooperative learning tools help educators create dynamic learning communities to promote academic achievement in all subject areas, and It Works! The process addresses the whole child and fosters the development of collaborative skills that are vital for success in our rapidly changing world. Provincial initiatives like Daily Physical Activity, Character Education, Bully Prevention, and the Safe and Inclusive School bill are most compatible with our philosophy. The process embeds effective classroom management practices within teachers’ routines and structures to enable them to use cooperative learning strategies with great success. The process gives teachers strategies and active tools to use Multiple Intelligences and Brain Compatible Learning in differentiated lesson planning. Academic achievement and social-emotional development are enhanced through the process. Community building and cooperative learning have been identified as an effective teaching tool in many Ontario district school boards. This training is something that recruiters often look for when hiring new teachers here and overseas.

The two day experiential workshop prepares Pre-K–12 administrators, teachers and teacher candidates, as well as community members and support staff, to use the community building process as the foundation for transforming the classroom and school community environment to one in which teaching methods are effective in reaching and teaching students of and for today’s world. Using multiple intelligence, brain compatible learning and cooperative methods, school and classroom climates and teacher attitude will begin to reflect the message of life-long learning, personal development and civic responsibility as the key to preventing alienation, anger and isolation.

The Process, How it Works

It is a democratic process, not just a curriculum or a set of cooperative activities.

A ‘process’ is a sequence of events that leads to the achievement of an outcome.

The goal of the process is to develop a positive environment that promotes human growth and learning. It is about learning how to build community through stages of group development using expectations/agreements among the students or adults with whom you are working. Five expectations/agreements are honoured:

physical and emotional safety
focused listening
positive support without any disparaging comments
shared regard for all
expectation to participate with the option to delay until comfortable/ready

Students learn a set of collaborative skills so they can work well together in long‑term groups. The focus is on how to:

help each other work on tasks
set goals and solve problems
monitor and assess progress
celebrate achievements

Students are successful because they:

• are included and appreciated by peers and teachers
• are accepted for their different abilities, cultures, gender, interests and dreams
• are actively involved in their own learning by developing positive self-esteem and expectations
• are actively encouraged by their peers to succeed