There Is No "I" in Team: Learning how to work together effectively during an engineering design project.

This article analyzes how fourth graders collaborate when working on an engineering project. Specifically, what are habits that fourth graders exhibit when working together successfully? Acting as a participant-researcher, I compared the habits of eight fourth-grade students (two groups) in a rural classroom by video-recording the students collaborating on an engineering project. The results showed that the biggest indicator of success was using inclusive language such as 'we' and 'ours.' This article emphasizes the difference between groups' use of the word "I" and the word "we." I then replicated these findings with a subsequent fourth-grade class. I suggest that we, as educators, can explicitly teach our students to use more inclusive language when collaborating. The inclusive language may help students be more successful when working on all kinds of projects, including science and engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]