Before:
Create teams of 3-5 students that will remain in place either all year or each semester.
Be cognisant of personalities, academic strengths and weaknesses, and behavioral needs.
Decide what you want your teams to accomplish. Are you focused on effort, process, or product? How do you want your teams to function? Will teammates be assigned specific roles, or will they choose for themselves?
Day 1 (10-20 minutes)
Talk about what it means to be a team member versus a leader. Why do we work in teams? What are some examples of teams you know? Make an anchor chart to guide the discussion.
Introduce or review the roles you want your teams to utilize. Add to the anchor chart.
Day 2 (10-20 minutes)
Review anchor chart and previous learning.
Place students into their pre-created groups. Allow them to choose a place to work in the classroom.
The challenge: Work together to create a team name. Write it on a paper along with their names.
Whole Class Debrief. Students share their name: Random reporter (number team members 1-4, roll dice and that person reports). Also, point out what you saw and heard as teams were working. Ask students what made your team work well/not well? What can your team do next time?
Day 3 (10-20 minutes)
Review anchor chart and previous challenge.
Teach/practice active listening. Active listening skills are essential in good group work. When students are listening well, their eyes are on the speaker and their mouths are closed. Active listeners avoid interrupting but may sometimes summarize what they hear and ask for clarification when needed. (demonstrate by having students practice with partner). Active listening shows respect for the speaker and allow the listener to learn as much as possible from that speaker's words. Ask how they will manage who is speaking and when to change speakers?
The challenge: create speaking norms.
Whole Class Debrief. Students share their system: Random reporter (number team members 1-4, roll dice and that person reports).
Day 4-6 (10-20 minutes each day)
Review anchor chart and previous learning.
Teach/practice explaining ideas and opinions. Team members need this skill to communicate in cooperative interactions. Explaining must go beyond single-word answers; students have to use complete sentences and explain their thinking. They must explain their ideas to others so that peers can understand them too. This demands metacognition, evidentiary thinking, summarizing, paraphrasing, and listening to others thoughtfully. Have students practice with a partner to summarize what they heard you just say during instruction.
In conjunction, students need to encourage teammates. This is a great place to bring in appropriate discourse sentence stems such as “I agree”, “I disagree because”, or “I was thinking…” This helps all members of the team feel valuable and heard. Have students practice using respectful words and tones.
The challenge: do some fairly simple STEM type challenges so students can practice working together. Students can also do team building activities (human knot, etc).
Day 7 (10-20 minutes)
Review anchor chart and previous learning.
The challenge: Create a poster that represents your team.
Whole class debrief.
Your teams are ready to accept an academic challenge. In addition, teams will build mutual respect and trust, making it easier for quieter students to take risks and participate more fully. Every few weeks, challenge the teams with a team building activity to continue to nurture their functionality and respect.
