Collaboration
A
s a student teacher, Andrea Rodriquez was an
advocate of group work. Unfortunately, students in
the classroom where she was learning to teach rarely
worked together. Instead, seated in rows, they worked
independently on teacher-designed tasks. Andrea’s
supervising teacher explained that students preferred
working alone and often were unproductive when
working together. Nevertheless she reluctantly let
Andrea give group work a go.
Andrea’s first attempt might have been her
last except for her stubbornness to make it work. All
her supervising teacher’s warnings predicted the problems she encountered. While Andrea
distributed the handout she had prepared the night before, she promised the students, “You’re
going to enjoy this.” But students ignored the promise, barely glanced at the handout, and
silently stared straight ahead. They ignored the directions to move into groups, assign roles, and
discuss the problem that Andrea had laboriously crafted.
“You have to talk to each other,” Andrea cajoled. “All you have to do is to follow the
directions on the handout.”
The room remained silent. Trying to be patient, Andrea waited and then walked from
group to group, urging the students to follow the directions on the handout.
“You only have five minutes left. This is worth twenty points, so you want to make sure
that you get started.”
Again, there was silence, except in one group. Emily tried to convince her teammates to
do the work. When they ignored her, Emily quickly did the work. When the five minutes were
up, only Emily had turned in the work; the other students passively accepted the zero.
Six Weeks Later
Six weeks later, Andrea walked into her class and saw that most of the students were already in
their groups. Instead of the quiet she had faced that first day, students were getting ready to
work. It was a different scene, and one Andrea was proud of. She had learned quite a bit over
that month and knew that persistence, careful planning, and diligent modeling had made the
difference.
After the initial failure at group work, Andrea was tempted to give up but was determined
to make group work succeed. From that painful first experience, she knew she had work to do.
Her first step was to be strategic in group membership. Even though students wanted to work
with their friends, she knew that she had to make sure each group had someone likely to be a
leader and someone who could support the most academically challenged member of the group.
Carefully she figured out who would work well with whom and how she could balance student
personalities and academic strengths. She also kept her groups to a small size: three or four
students. This was enough for good conversation even if students were absent. At the same time,
the groups were small enough that there was subtle pressure for all to perform. It was hard to
hide in such a small group.
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Andrea realized that her students needed to learn how to work collaboratively. Assigning
a group task without instruction was a recipe for failure. She began modeling how to work
effectively in a group before she moved students into groups. Right before her second attempt at
group work, she asked four students to join her in a role play of group work gone bad. One boy
agreed to play a sleeping student, another to be the student who did all the work herself, another
to get up and wander away from the group, and a fourth to play with his cell phone rather than
pay attention to the group. After the simulation and lots of laughter, the class debriefed what the
students had observed and together generated a set of agreements for how to work effectively in
a group.
But the modeling wasn’t enough. Each day that students worked in groups, Andrea
started class with a focus lesson on group skills. Her early lessons were devoted to ways that
each group member could support effective group processes. Frequently she gave students the
language they needed to accomplish their goals. For instance, she helped them figure out how to
reconnect to the previous day’s learning by using a prompt, such as “Where did we leave off
yesterday?” Another focus lesson provided tips for getting team members back on track. Again
she gave them the language: “Here’s what you might say: ‘I’m at the end of the first page; where
are you?’” To urge a silent student to talk, she suggested saying, “I’m curious about what you
think.” She also pushed them to encourage
Andrea’s five key points for effective group
divergent thinking by asking for additional
work.
opinions.
1. Good group work needs to be explained
Since students were quite familiar
and modeled.
with teacher-led instruction, they knew how
2. The teacher must instruct students in
to comply well. Group work switched the
strategies for taking an active
rules, requiring them to take more
leadership role.
responsibility for their learning. This switch
3.
The modeling needs to be repeated
in paradigms meant that Andrea needed to
when necessary, and students need
reinforce new ways of doing school,
small reminders about good group
untypical roles for learners, and unfamiliar
work.
ways of making sense of content. To move
4. The teacher must monitor groups.
students from passive, compliant learners to
5. Students grow by assessing themselves
active, engaged learners, Andrea had to
as group members and by assessing
model time and time again effective group
their group.
behavior. Sometimes all she had to do was
to ask a leading question, such as “How do you know when everyone in a group is on task?”
Often these simple questions led to a change in behaviors.
This required Andrea to monitor student behavior. Daily, she listened to and carefully
watched the groups. Without this monitoring, she knew that students would return to their former
behavior.
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From Clock Watchers, Quate/McDermott
Below are more tips and ideas for effective collaboration:
Paula Rutherford in Why Didn’t I Learn This in College? suggests that students should know the
following if they are going to work well in a group. After getting to know your students, select
the ones that your students need to learn and teach them these skills. Be sure to model what the
skill looks like in practice and what the skill does NOT look like:
Moving into groups quickly and quietly
Giving positive non-verbal feedback
Avoiding putdowns
Disagreeing with ideas, not people
Checking for understanding
Staying on task
Waiting to talk without interrupting
Ignoring distractions
Respecting the opinions of others
Asking probing questions
Asking clarifying questions
Encouraging others to participate
Making eye contact
Summarizing
Agreeing to disagree
Checking for agreement
Sharing the airspace
Paraphrasing
Not interrupting
Building on the ideas of others
Give And Take Grid
Students receive a grid, such as the one below. They move around the room, working with other
students to fill in information for each square.
The example below is based on the study of a poem.
Examples of metaphor
Examples of simile
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Examples of personification
Whose Number This Time?
In a box, have five 3 x 5 cards, each with a number between 1 and 5.
Form groups of five.
Within the groups, have each student select a number between 1 and 5.
Teacher poses a question.
Students collaborate to find an answer.
Teacher selects a 3x5 card and has each student with a corresponding number answer.
Teacher returns the 3x5 card to the box. (This is very important since the goal is to keep
all the students on their toes.)
Ideas from Kagan’s Cooperative Learning:
o Find the Fib: Students work to figure out which of a series of statements is true or a
false.
o Mix-Pair-Discuss: After a teacher asks a challenging question, students pair with others
to answer.
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From Clock Watchers, Quate/McDermott