Building Collaboration Skills

Back | Page 2 of 2 | Next: DLC Resource Jigsaw

Explore Communication Skills

How will you help teachers who are at varying stages of integrating technology?

Communication Skills and Strategies

Active Listening

• Attend fully to the speaker, lock out competing thoughts, lean forward, make eye contact, and pause before responding.
• Attend to the conversation.
• Strive to pause for 5 to 10 seconds after someone finishes speaking to allow the speaker to think and to model thoughtfulness.

Paraphrasing

• Restate what was said to indicate acceptance, encouragement, and understanding.
• Avoid "I" because it signals that what the speaker is thinking no longer matters and that the paraphraser is going to insert his or her own ideas into the conversation.

Paraphrasing can:

• Create a safe environment for thinking. It says, "I am trying to understand you, and therefore I value what you have to say."
• Help establish a relationship between you and participating teachers.

Clarifying Questions

• Add clarity to the conversation.
• Are factual questions.
• Help the speaker be more specific.
• Do not require a lot of thought to answer.

Examples of clarifying questions:

• How did you present the information?
• How many students were there?
• Were students working in groups?

Probing Questions

• Push the speaker to think more deeply about a topic.
• Are often prefaced by a paraphrase.
• Are open-ended and do not carry a solution (better if the questioner does not have the answer).
• Are questions that help focus the speaker rather than satisfy the coach's curiosity.

Examples of probing questions:

• You said that _____. Have you ever thought about _____?
• Are there other strategies that you could use to introduce that lesson?
• How do you feel it went?
• What might a next step be?
• What did you learn from that?
• Have you seen or used other classroom assessments that are effective?

(Adapted from Garmston & Wellman, 2002)

Explore Communication Skills

Now you will have an opportunity to practice these skills.

Materials

• Practice Communication Skills Exercise located in your Participant Handbook.
• Pencil
• Sticky notes
• Communication Skills Cue Card

Getting Started

1. Get into groups of four to six.
2. Follow the directions in the Building Collaboration Skills handout.
3. Debrief the exercise using the directions on the exercise.

Back | Page 2 of 2 | Next: DLC Resource Jigsaw