How to support creativity and collaboration in the primary classroom

Most educators would agree that ‘collaboration’ is integral to modern communicative language teaching (CLT), but how can we encourage it among young language learners? After all, children are not known for their ability to focus for long on their own tasks, let alone work together with others! And how do we foster creativity while endeavouring to build collaboration skills?

This workshop will focus on the key collaboration skills young learners need to become effective, creative and efficient learners, and the methods we can use to help develop these key skills. We will first identify these skills and the positive effects creativity and collaboration have in the English Language Teaching classroom. Then, review and address the challenges we will face in working with young learners to encourage creativity and collaboration. Finally, we will share and discuss some practical ideas for implementation using examples from OUP primary coursebooks that you are familiar with.