The Three C’s
Communication, Collaboration and Cooperation
In the Pre-prep classroom, life is all about learning how to work with others and being part of a team.
Teamwork helps children to hone many social skills, such as patience, empathy, communication, respect for others and tolerance.
These skills are often more difficult to learn than numbers, shapes and letters as children often see themselves as the centre of their own world. Their needs come first and it’s very hard for them to put those aside to allow someone else’s needs to be met.
Teamwork teaches children how to listen, which is the first step in effective communication.
Without listening it is impossible to have dialogue with others.
Teamwork also requires each member of the team to be able to express their own ideas and opinions.
Each’s members ideas are of equal value.
This form of peer collaboration helps children to understand the value of working with others,
- how to problem solve; and
- think creatively.
Working in small and large groups reinforces the idea that the purpose of teamwork is to learn how to be cooperative, not competitive.
Hula hoop Challenge
This challenge relies heavily on the 3 C’s for a successful outcome.
The objects of the challenge is to move a hula-hoop along a line of children who are all holding hands.
The children are not allowed to use their hands to touch the hoop but instead have to bend and wiggle and move their bodies through the hoop.
The children need to communicate with each other and strategize how they are going to move.
If one child’s arm needs to go up, they need to let their partner know to place their arm up also.
This experience had the class in fits of giggles. At first they attempted the challenge in groups of 3 with each child being of similar height, “too easy” was the shared opinion.
Next 2 groups joined together. This proved to be more difficult as the different heights required the children to bend and move their body in a new way. This group used a lot of verbal directions to help each other move.
Finally all groups joined together in a random order.
This was the real challenge. Mixing up the groups required new strategies to be formed, all children needed to cooperate otherwise the challenge wouldn’t be successful.
After a few trial starts the team had established a system which worked. They worked together to move the hula-hoop along the line and celebrated with a dance party.
Engaging children early on in team- building activities such as this one can help to create foundations for later team-based work in which collaboration together is critical to students success.
That’s all from Miss Patti and the Sea Turtles (Pingins)
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