Reading Response #2

1)   The focus of learning communities is to build up a collaborative effort between teachers to improve student learning. Teachers are normally isolated in their teaching and learning communities is a way to bring them all together.

2)   One of the largest benefits of learning communities is that teachers are able to give each other critical feedback to improve lesson ideas and see flaws before the lesson is given to students. This allows the lessons to run much smoother.

3)   Learning communities affect teachers by giving them someone else to talk to in order to improve their teaching. These can be colleagues teaching in your school or people teaching across the globe. Learning communities bring people together.

4)   Learning communities affect students by allowing them to get more out of the lesson. They are also able to connect with other students from around the world. Other students can use the data that your students collect and they can use what those students have found in return. Learning becomes collaborative and connected.

5)   A main component for shared visions in the learning community is that teachers work together. The ultimate goal of course is that the students are able to learn. Both the teachers and the students want to be goal oriented. Everyone looks for ways to further improve learning.

6)   The concepts in this chapter connect to our topic because we are acting as the teachers. The three of us are working together and collaborating so that our students are able to get the most from this project. We are bouncing ideas off of each other and are able to give each other feedback. Our students will also hopefully be able to connect to members of the community when they sell what they have grown.