Nurturing Collaboration and Positive Learning: Insights from Educator and Writer, Kristin Rydholm
In the U.S., a reported 93 percent of households adopted distanced learning during the pandemic, leading to a new, home-based learning approach. While distance learning allowed students to continue to learn through a global pandemic, they often had fewer opportunities to collaborate with others.
Why is it important that students learn to collaborate in the classroom? How does storytelling promote character development and teach important life skills? How can we encourage students to make positive choices through both collaboration and storytelling?
We huddled up with educator and writer Kristin Rydholm to find out. Rydholm received her BA in education from National Louis University and her MS in reading and literacy from Bank Street College of Education. Rydholm originally worked as an early childhood teacher with a focus on kindergarten and as an Educational Facilitator for 4 years. Rydholm has also written numerous articles for organizations such as Edutopia, the American Library Association, and Scholastic.
From leveraging storytelling to practical strategies for fostering positive decision-making, Rydholm shares the importance of collaborative learning and ways to implement it in the classroom. Let’s dive in:
The Importance of Collaboration
In Rydholm’s classroom, collaboration was the foundation for the success of each student. Collaboration, whether through working on a project with others or classroom discussions, helps build classroom community and shifts students away from a “me-focused” mindset. When students understand the importance of collaboration and become skilled in working with others, they will develop higher-level thinking, while improving their oral communication and self-management skills.
To form this community, educators can be intentional, create repetition through routines, and be transparent with their students. In Rydholm’s classroom, she incorporated intentional learning and created routines with three activities she implemented daily. Here are the three activities she suggests that you can implement in your classroom and how they support a collaborative mindset:
- Activity: Review events on a daily visual schedule during a Morning Meeting.
- Description: Every day a different student reads off the list of events that the class plans to do that day. Writing the events on Velcro cards allows them to quickly be adjusted if plans change.
- How this supports a collaborative mindset: This sets the stage at the beginning of each day with what WE are doing as a class.
- Activity: Taking photographs
- Description: Capture pictures of students collaborating on activities (e.g. building a block building or playing together at recess).
- How this supports a collaborative mindset: Students see that you as an educator are prioritizing pictures featuring working and playing together. These photos also serve as excellent documentation for assessments and bridging home/school connections.
- Activity: End of the day huddle on “What Did We Do Today?”
- Description: 5 students suggest 5 activities that the class did during the day, with special emphasis on new and/or unexpected events. This list is visible to parents during pick-up time and featured in the parent newsletter. Sample answers might look something like this:
- We wrote our Weekend News.
- We made our self-portraits.
- We picked out library books.
- We played in the snow
- We read a story called Big Feelings.
- How this supports a collaborative mindset: Ending the day with the same message as you started the day reinforces the message of “we-ness”.
- Description: 5 students suggest 5 activities that the class did during the day, with special emphasis on new and/or unexpected events. This list is visible to parents during pick-up time and featured in the parent newsletter. Sample answers might look something like this:
Another way that Rydholm fostered these skills in her students was by having classroom discussions based on picture books:
“Post-reading classroom discussions are collaborative moments. Discussions require listening, reflecting, responding, and questioning. So, having a series of classroom discussions based on picture books that feature characters who collaborate seems like a perfect fit to me!”
Rydholm discovered that while discussions on picture books were a great way to fuel collaboration in the classroom, they also offered other benefits, such as improving communication skills and empowering fun tech-free times.
Storytelling: The Foundation of Communication
Rydholm found that using picture books in her classroom often fostered collaborative discussions and improved communication skills. Storytelling enhances students’ communication skills by teaching them to actively listen, participate in narrative discussions, use sophisticated language to describe topics, and familiarize them with reading and writing.
Rydholm shares, “Picture books allow children to hear and see stories. These books can be read, passed around, discussed, and reread. Picture books that feature children have the additional benefit of being potential sources of identification for young readers.”
The routine of reading books with a common theme, whether they’re picture books or not, helps students form points of reference for their knowledge.
“When reading many books on a common theme, patterns begin to emerge and much richer conversations can blossom between students and adults. Comparisons can be made, ideas can be hatched, personal connections can be shared.”
While Rydholm uses storytelling through picture books, storytelling can take place in a variety of ways. For middle and high school students, they often learn and share stories through social media. Empowering students to actively listen and tell stories based on the information they see online can help them become knowledgeable about important topics, such as global news or advancements in technology. When students can effectively gather information from the world around them, online or offline, they’ll become better at communicating their knowledge effectively.
Rydholm suggests these two resources for educators who are interested in implementing positive learning through storytelling. These resources dive further into how storytelling positively impacts students and what books educators can use to implement collaborative learning in the classroom:
- Mem Fox’s book: Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever.
- You can also learn more about picture books that encourage collaboration and communication in Rydholm’s article: “Picture Books That Inspire Collaboration in Early Childhood Classrooms.”
Storytelling is an excellent way to help students improve their communication, comprehension, and listening skills, but these are not its only benefits. Storytelling can also introduce students to the importance of making positive choices.
The Power of Choice: Encouraging Positive Decision-Making
As students begin to make more decisions on their own, whether they are choosing what to eat or choosing who to follow on social media, empowering them to make positive choices helps students reach their short and long-term goals, which ultimately fuels their future success. When discussing positive decision-making with Rydholm, she shares how she encouraged responsible choices with “choice time” in her Kindergarten class:
“When I was a Kindergarten teacher, there was a time of day called “choice time.” This daily student-directed activity time was meant to encourage children to follow their interests, navigate shared spaces and materials, and learn from one another. Allowing children to make independent and/or group choices empowers them, primarily because they are highly motivated and fully invested!”
During “choice time,” students select activities to participate in, such as block building, dramatic play, writing, puzzles, books, and more. In Rydholm’s article, “6 Books for Young Students about Making Choices,” she highlights how integrating choice time into the school day has numerous benefits, like allowing children to learn from each other and making them feel like their choices are valued. The picture books Rydhom uses assist young students in defining what choice is, and what making a choice can look like. These books often highlighted how to make a positive choice, who you can consult when you need help making a decision, and how good choices often lead to positive outcomes.
Ultimately, through implementing strategies like “choice time,” educators can help students feel empowered to make positive choices and help them build the foundation of responsible decision-making for the future.
Integrating Positive Learning and Collaboration into the Classroom
Rydholm’s work with young students to encourage collaboration and positive choices reveals that it is never too early to equip students with modern life skills that will set them up for future success. Peer-to-peer learning, such as #WinAtSocial, is created to empower elementary through high school students to make positive choices, online and offline. With lessons such as our 5th-grade lesson, Teaming up with grown-ups you admire to accomplish your goals, educators, and students huddle together and participate in gamified learning that equips them with modern life skills that will empower them to reach their goals.
Want to learn more about #WinAtSocial and how you can run it in your classroom? You can contact us for more information about our lessons and address your school’s needs.
The Social Institute (TSI) is the leader in empowering students by understanding students. Through #WinAtSocial, our gamified, peer-to-peer learning platform, we equip students, educators, and families to navigate their social world – in the classroom and beyond, online and offline – in healthy, high-character ways. Our unique, student-respected approach empowers and equips, rather than scares and restricts. We incorporate timely topics about social media, tech use, and current events that are impacting student well-being and learning. #WinAtSocial Lessons teach life skills for the modern day, capture student voice, and provide school leaders with actionable insights. Through these insights, students play an essential role in school efforts to support their own health, happiness, and future success as we enable high-impact teaching, meaningful family conversations, and a healthy school culture.