Does Nature Inspire Us: Exploring Collaboratively

After attending a few seminars on active and collaborative learning, I started introducing some collaborative activities in my classroom teaching to foster collaboration among students. Initially, I faced many challenges while organizing collaborative activities. I wasn’t sure how to design appropriate group tasks or how to create groups. Most importantly, I worried about managing class time and enhancing and monitoring productive collaboration among my students. After a few trials and errors, I slowly learned to make groups properly, utilize class time efficiently and maintain discipline in the classroom to the maximum extent possible. It was only then, that students gradually started enjoying my sessions. With this, I saw there was also a slow change in my classroom culture. I could see that all my students were involved, including the quieter ones. My students’ active involvement in learning was a real boost for me and it motivated me to plan more collaborative activities.

I would like to share a collaborative learning lesson plan that I prepared for the lesson Alchemy of Nature by Raksha Bharadia found in the Std. X Kumarbharati textbook. In this piece, the author tries to convey how elements of nature inspire us in different ways.  Flowers bloom for a day, but throughout that day they smile with the sun and dance with the wind inspiring us to live our life to its fullest, no matter how short it may be. An important idea used throughout the prose is that a glimpse of something tiny can provoke you to imagine something really big. Metaphors are used powerfully in the prose to convey many ideas.

I had multiple objectives when I decided to use collaborative learning to teach this poem. I wanted students to imagine and give free reign to their ideas by matching their inspiration from elements of nature with the author’s inspiration. I also wanted students to work with each other and begin learning small things about cooperation, for example, listening patiently to another person’s idea. I also hoped such an activity would build their confidence by developing their presentation skills.

For achieving my set objectives, first I wrote some natural elements on the board and asked them to draw and colour these elements in their notebook. This step helped  create an interest for the poem and also make it more visual for learners. Initially, they showed some resistance to colour. Some responses were, “We are grown up now, we stopped using colours”, “Colouring is a childish activity”. But I stood my ground and motivated them to use colours for the activity.  Subsequently, they started enjoying it. One student remarked, “It seems this lesson is going to be very interesting.”

It took them more than thirty minutes to complete the drawing activity. In the following step, I adopted the see-think-share strategy, where they first observed their drawing and thought individually how and what each element of nature teaches them. Then, it was a time to form a group and allow them to share their ideas. To avoid disturbance in creating a group and also keeping in mind the time limit, I asked students from one bench to turn around and face members on the bench behind them and form a group which approximately consisted of 5 to 6 members. They shared their thoughts with their group members and merged all different thoughts together. Finally, each group came forward and presented how each element of nature inspires them.

When students were discussing I observed and realized that my students were learning small but important things about teamwork – they were respecting each others’ thoughts, they were learning to communicate well and most importantly, self-learning was actually happening in the class. Once they got ready with their points, I asked them to present their ideas in front of the class. One member from each group came and presented their points very well and this was the time when I connected and matched their inspiration with the author’s inspiration as mentioned in the poem. I was very surprised to know that without even opening the textbook the students’ presentations covered all the inspiration mentioned by the author. After the presentations when I was reading the lesson I could see the confidence and glow on my student’s faces as they realised they already shared all the points mentioned in the piece and few more than that. They had understood the essence of the lesson through their own efforts! As a final step I discussed figures of speech and  important questions with my students and completed the poem. I felt a real sense of achievement. 

When I went through all the presentations, I saw simple yet attractive drawings and personal inspiration which were well arranged and beautifully written. I was also amazed to see their different styles of presenting similar ideas. I realised that my students interpreted the lesson beyond my expectation which gave me a sense of achievement. After this positive experience of teaching with collaborative strategies, I can say that collaborative activities can make your  class active and fun-filled and it’s really worth your time.

Contributed by Meher Lakwani, English Teacher