Reading Reflection 2

1.  The focus of a learning community is for teachers and students to come together and work collaboratively on a certain project. The focus should be on getting the most out of that project and how students will get the most and best learning.

      2. Some of the benefits of learning communities include: having time to work together and learn from one another, sharing ideas with other teachers/students, having a support system in which you learn together, and projects are taken to the next level.

      3.    Learning communities affect teachers because they give them the chance to come together and talk about what is going on inside their classrooms. It gives teachers a chance to give and receive critical feedback on the type of projects and learning going on in their classrooms. Teachers come to respect one another and see value in each other’s work. They can also really help teachers to develop their curriculum and improve as an overall teacher.

      4.   Learning communities can affect students because the students learning really improves and the view of the overall school improves. Students learn to learn together within a learning community.  They develop the skills that are necessary when working out in the real world, such as communicating well with others, how to problem solve, how to manage projects and how to stay motivated and persistent.

       5.   Learning communities have components that lead to a shared vision. Some of these components include: teachers coming together and having a common goal, often being to maximize the amount of learning done by their students; teachers coming together and agreeing on a series of changes or classroom implements that they want to make; and many ideas from different teachers coming together to create an overall goal for a section of their school.

      6.   This chapter on creating a professional learning community directly relates to the project we will be creating in our class.  We are coming together and collaborating on the best ideas for our projects. We will give feedback on each other’s ideas and decide together on what we want to include within the project.  There will be shared responsibility on what goes into the project. We will be learning together and deciding as a team what we want to go into our project.