Collaborative learning contributes to the Common core state standards by promoting

diverse thinkers through discussions of various problem solving strategies from students.

Collaborative learning in classroom settings can be seen through differentiated instruction and be

beneficial for students to learn from each others ideas. In the lesson plan activity from Engage

that I will be using for students in a fourth grade classroom, states how “SMP3 requires that

students engage in constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others”

(Engage, pg.1). Students who participate by working together become more aware of what they

are learning and ultimately meeting the objectives from the common core.

Collaborative learning strategies differ from the traditional teaching method by the way it

is taught to students. They both are assessed differently by individual or group assessments. The

teacher may give a worksheet for a student to work on individually with traditional teaching.

While as with collaborative learning teacher use scaffolding to help the students as they worked

together in groups. Collaborative learning is the new way to get students to share their ideas and

work together to meet the same goal instead of individually. It takes more time for teachers to

prepare collaborative learning lessons but they are highly effective and beneficial for the

students.

One concept I would teach to students would be how to create conversion tables for

length, weight, height and know capacity units by using measuring tools and using tables to

solve pattern problems. While in the activity students would discover how multiplication relates

to the conversion of measurement units. Before showing the students other methods, I would

show them a general t-chart table and have them make the connections through their own

problems they would make up with each other. How I would first introduce this activity would

be by using random objects and measuring things with them. To set an example I would ask for
any choice of measurement from a student, such as a pencil or a notebook. Then I would

measure another object from the choice of another student (preferably something that is bigger)

and we all would count how many it would take to reach the height. So we have now completed

our first measurement together visually and using objects from the classroom. Then I would have

groups of students pick their own two choices of measurement and what is being measured. This

helps introduce how measurements work and show visually what goes into the measurements

each time. For example: We are using pencils to measure a door. It takes 32 pencils (using the

same pencil) to know the height of the door. The door is what we are measuring. How it would

look like on a table:

Amount of doors Doors height in pencils

1 32
? ?
3 96
? ?

The Common Core standards are used in this activity because of the practice these

students are using are abstract reasoning and quantitative. Children are able to make up

measurement units(objects) and then measure them out with rulers as the next step. In the

classroom text, “Mathematical Activities for Elementary Teachers”, one of the standards for

mathematical practice in the Common core in regards to the units involved, “Attending to the

meaning of quantities, not just how to compute them, and knowing and flexibly using different

properties of operations and objects” (Dolan, Williamson, Muri, 2015, p. xv). In this activity the

children are free to use their own measurements by giving meaning to them. This activity

enhances students understanding because of how they are involved in creating their own units of
measurements making them understand what goes on to both sides of the equal sign and what is

going in.
 Work Cited

EngageNY. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.engageny.org/resource/grade-4-mathematics-

module-7/file/149261

Long, C. T., DeTemple, D. W., & Millman, R. S. (2015). Mathematical reasoning for
elementary teachers. Boston: Pearson.