Running Head: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 1

Effective Communication and Collaboration

Emily Simmons

Regent University

In partial fulfillments of requirements for UED 495

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 2

Effective Communication and Collaboration Competency

Introduction

As a teacher, one will have to develop excellent communication skills. Whether it is

communicating with your students, with their parents, or even with other teachers and

administration; this is a skill that you will need to master as a professional. While working with

elementary students it is crucial that you have a good sense of communication so that you can

always make sure your students know what is expected of them. As a teacher, you also must stay

in communication with other teachers for your grade level but also with the administration to

make sure you are staying on task and being effective with your time.

Rationale for Selection of Artifacts

While working at Malibu Elementary School, there have been many times where proper

communication was needed. While conversing with students on how they behaved, to working

and planning with the fourth-grade teachers and the specialists; each and every day

communication has played a major role. Malibu teachers come together to collaborate and do

group lesson planning especially for Language Arts, each week we meet with the reading

specialist to go through the weekly agenda.

The first artifact that I want to delve into is my weekly LA lesson plans that we created

while working with the reading specialist, along with the other two fourth grade teacher’s. Each

week we go through what we want the whole group lesson should be, along with what each class

should be doing for their small group time. The past few weeks we have been going through text

and word features. Each teacher becomes responsible for creating the worksheet or classwork

that the students are supposed to do that corelates with the text or word feature for the day. For

example, on the lesson plans that are included on the bottom you can see that for the independent
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work for that week, by every day there is a teacher’s name. Each teacher was responsible for

creating the worksheet for that day, it was then shared with the other teachers to alleviate some

work and allow them to come together as a team to make the work easier for everyone.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 states “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.”

This is very true when you are collaborating with other teachers, when you each take an activity

then share it with each other, it makes the work load lighter for everyone. This is true all

throughout life, when you are working with a team of people you can get much more done than

if someone was doing everything on their own.

The second artifact that I have included is a photo of my students working together on a

quizlet activity. Each student was put into a group, they had to have their chrome book out and

they all lined up next to each other. Quizlet then would project a single question onto everyone’s

screen, but each student had different answers on their screens. They had to work together as a

team to figure out who’s chrome book had the correct answer. Each team was competing against

the other teams, and if a team got the question wrong they were put back at the beginning. The

students loved it and it was a wonderful way for us to foster healthy relationships and

collaboration between the students.

Reflection on Theory and Practice

While studying at Regent University there were many times that we as the students had to

come together and create a project. One that sticks out to me was when I had to take Earth

Science class, we would have to do these labs in class then as a group we would collaboratively

write up our lab report. This required us all to bring our results together and make sure that

everyone was on the same page, if someone had struggled with the lab we were able to help them

understand what they did wrong. In a book I read recently, it was called “who moved my
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 4

cheese?” It was about a group of mice who had to keep changing what they did and work

together to find their food every day. One of the mice stated near the end that he had “learned

something useful about moving on from his mice friend.” (Johnson, 2016) When you have

someone there with us, we are able to build each other up, help them move on when it’s hard, or

help them if they need help.

As a teacher, you most likely will not be the only one teaching your grade level. Just like

at Malibu, there will most likely be a few teachers teaching the same grade, this doesn’t mean

you have to do everything the way they are doing it, but if you have a question as to how you

want to teach a certain subject you can go ask your co-workers. Working at Malibu has certainly

grown my appreciation for the family that is created between the staff. There are days when we

go to planning especially for Language Arts and everyone pools together their data and we can

discuss how we can get the students to be performing higher. Regent University prepared me for

this by the number of projects I had to do with my peers. Earth Science was not the only class

where this happened, most of my teaching classes had group projects or at least group work

included as well. Aside from classes we even had small groups or Bible studies where we would

come together and encourage one another. This makes me think of the time the thirty-three mines

were stuck in a mine in Chile. There was an article that I had read and one of the guys had told

the interviewer that “We survived on hope and courage, and each other.” (Rescuing 33 miners

trapped in Chile, 2010) Collaboration and communication is a key skill that will show up in

many aspects of one’s life, we need each other, “it is not good for the man to be alone.” (NIV)

In conclusion, you are a role model to your students and they are watching you. By the

way you communicate school projects to them or even the way you are speaking with them as a

whole class or one on one, this all shows them the proper way to communicate. Our goal as a
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teacher should be to raise responsible students, independent thinkers, and team players. We also

as a Christian want to make sure our students know that they are special and cared for, we can do

this in the way we communicate and talk with them.

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References

Johnson, S. (2016). Who moved my cheese? Abbotsford, British Columbia: The Braille

Superstore.

Rescuing 33 miners trapped in Chile 'to take months'. (2010, August 23). Retrieved February 15,

2018, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-11056607

The Holy Bible

Artifact 1

Included in external link

Feb 5-9 LA lesson plans

Artifact 2