ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses team building, which is a vital step in the creation of productive teams. It presents author's own examples and illustrations in building a team. In the collaborative classroom, we can develop and exercise skills that will allow us to affect in positive ways our environment now and in the future. Quality caring relationships between teachers and students can have a profound effect on the learning in the classroom. Sharing information about summer activities, favourite sports teams, other classes taught and taken, extracurricular interests, common acquaintances and other things helps to break down that adversarial wall that seems to naturally exist between teachers and students. When the students have finished writing, pairs of students exchange papers, read and ask each other questions about what they read. At the end of the sharing, they shake hands and say thanks.