About this collaborative learning team

This collaborative team activity will study ways to add to learning by refining student thought through the dialog process. We will involve students in discourse of import to curricular areas that will promote higher order thinking skills and foster classroom learning communities. These goals will align to Iowa Core Standards by helping teachers increase the rigor and relevance of content material as well as providing formative assessment of student understanding throughout the discussion process. Differentiated instructional areas addressed during the study and follow-up collaborative work will include: Quality Curriculum, Continuous Assessment, and Building Community.  This effort will allow teachers to support different styles of learners with different readiness levels to participate successfully.

We will read the book Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? by Michael Sandel. As a group we will watch the videos connected with each of 10 topics. We will then develop rules of discourse to discuss the topics in groups. These will be incorporated into rubric form for self-assessment to be used by study group members and students in classes to determine their progress toward appropriate, effective discourse in a learning community.  Our project will be to develop lessons that involve a philosophical class discussion and to provide a summary of these activities to the group for shared evaluation and refinement.