Collaborative learning is a teaching style that has evolved over the last thirty years and is still evolving.

There are three primary aims that encompass the collaborative process.

First, by working together, learners are empowered, as they collaborate with every other learner in the class in a playful, but purposeful way.

Second, collaborative projects communicate increasingly complex ideas by presenting them in concrete, visual and tactile ways.

They do this by removing abstract thinking out of heads and giving it a physical presence. Third, collaborative projects encourage exploratory talk in the classroom.

There is increasing evidence that new meanings are developed by the combination of thinking and communicating with others.

There is also evidence that talk has been neglected in our classrooms and this has widened the gap in attainment.

For this activity, we collaborated to construct a haunted house!

Using boxes and black paint, we all created the building blocks, and then, worked together to make our structure come alive!