Ued495-496 Flack Caitlin Competency1

Running head: EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
Effective Collaboration and Communication

Caitlin Flack
Regent University
In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Spring 2015
Introduction
EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
Effective collaboration and communication involves not only the student and
teacher, but also parents and other professionals in the school. Different people have
varying perspectives of the needs of individual students. With everyone working together,
each student is sure to succeed.
Rationale for Selection of Artifacts
For this competency, I chose one artifact that represents collaboration and one
artifact that represents communication. The collaboration artifact is a short video of part
of a lesson given by one of the schools reading specialists. She came into the classroom
every Friday morning to teach a reading lesson that involved some type of higher-level
thinking. The specialist, my cooperating teacher, and I worked together to make sure that
the needs of the students were being met in the best way possible. We designed each
lesson around a skill the children needed more practice in based on the data we collected
from daily assignments. While the reading specialist gave the lesson, I was able to take
notes so I can use some of the techniques being demonstrated in future lessons. The
reading specialist has more experience and my cooperating teacher and I have more
modern techniques, so we were all able to share great ideas with each other. This mix of
teaching styles allowed for the students to get the best of both worlds.
I selected a note home to parents as my artifact demonstrating effective
communication. I have found that most of my students parents respond well to this. If
they receive a good note, both the parent and the student are very pleased. Notes
regarding poor behavior in the classroom are usually met with notes or phone calls back
from the parent saying they will help to make sure this behavior is not recurring. Parents
can also be kept in the loop about their childrens progress in school through notes home.
I recently had a student improve an entire grade level on a reading test. His dad was
extremely happy to read about this in a note that was sent home. In my experiences so
far, sending these notes home has been more effective than emails or phone calls.
Reflection on Theory and Practice
Effective collaboration and communication is key to a smooth-running classroom.
Throughout my courses at Regent, my professors were consistently reminding us to act
professionally when communicating with students, parents, fellow teachers, and all others
that we would be working with. This is something that cannot be forgotten. Maintaining
positive communication is extremely beneficial. By speaking and acting in a respectful
manner, people will be willing to hear what you have to say and take your opinions into
consideration. If they do not have a positive view of you due to poor communication,
they will be much more likely to shut down any thoughts or concerns you may have.
Successful learning involves cooperation between students, parents, teachers, and many
others. It is a combined effort among everyone that results in student growth.
When a group of parents were asked to list top teacher traits they believed were
important, one of the most frequently chosen was the ability to communicate (Powell,
2012, p. 21). Student growth should not stop when a child leaves school doors. It is
something that should be continued at home. Parents arent aware of what their child
needs to work on unless they are communicating with their childs teacher. It is our
responsibility, as teachers, to set up an effective form of communication with parents in
the beginning of the school year and to maintain it as the year progresses. If this occurs,
parents, students, and teachers can all work together to ensure that each child is getting
the most out of his or her education.
5
References
Powell, S. (2012). Your introduction to education: Explorations in teaching (2nd ed.).

Boston: Pearson.

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Running head: EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION

Effective Collaboration and Communication

In partial fulfillment of UED 495 Field Experience ePortfolio, Spring 2015

Powell, S. (2012). Your introduction to education: Explorations in teaching (2nd ed.).

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