Sociogram Paper
Mary Kate Sammon
EDP 621
April 25, 2005
As Richard and Patricia Schmuck stated in their book Group Processes in the
Classroom, “The increasing complexity of living in a worldwide community has placed
learning to work effectively in groups at center stage”(Schmuck & Schmuck, 2001). As
educators we strive to provide a safe learning environment for all students and hope that
they will grow to be successful and productive members of society. In order for students
to do this they need to have certain skills and be able to successfully interact in society.
We as teachers are constantly looking at our classrooms and the relationships that we
have with our students and how these relationships support our goal as teachers.
Collecting data on student’s relationships and opinions of each other is one way to
observe how well students are working with each other. There are many ways to organize
this information. I will use Sociograms to review and analyze the date from a multi-age
classroom of eight to eleven year olds. For more information on Sociogram’s please refer
to Dr. Larry Sherman’s web page. The data that was collected consisted of the student’s
responses to three positive questions and one negative question regarding their peers.
Each student is asked to nominate or choose three of their peers in the order that they
would choose them for a particular task. This data is then plotted by how the students
nominate others and who nominated them. I will discuss the conclusions I have come to
in relationship to group rapport, conflict, leadership, and expectations. I will provide
activities to help support the students and encourage a cooperative learning environment.
The students are comfortable working with peers of their own age group. They
very rarely choose other students that are not in the same age group as them. The students
also chose students who are of the same sex as they are as seen in figure one. This is very
apparent from the results of both question one and question two. This may be a
characteristic of this age group and the expectations that the students have for each other
and the expectations that adults may have of them. There also seem to be one or two
children with are chosen by their peers, these students include students 7 and 12. These
two students are both 10-year-old females. They most likely exhibit some kind of
leadership powers or possibly cohesive or reward powers over the others students. The
students who were chosen the most frequently often shared mutual choices with the
students who chose them.
The boys all chose among themselves. There choices were most often mutual
choices. There is a small group of the 9-year-old boys that have chosen each other.
Student 4 is the only one in this small group that has chosen outside his age group. He
chose a 10 year old and this was a mutual choice. This student may not feel the pressure
to conform to the norms that his age group has set. He may also be starting to take on a
leadership role among his age group, which allows him to chose outside, but not be
marginalized for his choice.
You can see that there seem to be small cliques within the male and female
groups. There are a few activities that I feel would really help the students get to know
each other better and help them feel more comfortable working with each other. In Mara
Sapon – Shevin’s (1999) book Because We Can Change the World, she lists some group
building and getting to know you activities. The activities “Little-Known Facts About
Me”(Sapnon-Shevin, 39) and “Collage of Me”(Sapon-Shevin, 39) in which the students
share information about themselves with each other will help their peers get to know
them better. This may help students find things that they have in common with each other
and may help break stereotypes that the children have of each other. This age group may
also enjoy the game, “Who is It?”(Sapon-Shevin, 40). The teacher will chose a certain
characteristic that a particular child had shared and then the other students try to guess
who it is. In addition to some sharing activities I also think it would be beneficial for the
class to participate in some community building activities. This classroom is a multi-age
group so some of the students have most likely spent more time with each other. The
youngest group may not feel comfortable or accepted among the other students. A team
building activity such as “Class Name/Theme”(Sapon-Shevin, 24) where the class works
together to create a special theme or name will help the students to feel united as a class.
The first two questions asked of the students were related to choices they would
make regarding social activities. In figure two, the students were asked whom they would
like to see a movie with. Again the girls and boys chose members of their same sex.
Students that were chosen most often were students 12, 13, 9, 11 and 21. These students
must have cohesive or reward power over the other students that they would be chosen by
so many of their peers. There are some children that seemed to be marginalized or
unaccepted by their peers. Students 24, 17, and 1 were not chosen by any of their peers.
The activities mentioned above might also help the children get to know and find more
students with which they have things in common. There are two other great activities
from Shmuck’s book that may also be beneficial. The first involves the children sharing
the things that they like and don’t like about being the sex they are and then they share
the same feelings about the opposite sex. The second activity is called “Be a Talent
Scout”, the children have a talent show to showcase the talents and hobbies.(S&S, 55) If
Figure One
the children begin to build rapport in school and begin to build relationships they are
more likely to continue these relationships out of school.
Figure Two
After looking over the first two questions I began to see certain children that stuck
out for both positive and negative reasons. Just from looking at Figures One and Two, I
was able to begin to pick out children that may be popular and students that seem to be
rejected by the group. When I moved on to the result of the fourth question (Figure 4)
some of these students began to stick out even more. I will discuss further some of the
causes for their rejection in relationship to the final two Sociograms (Figures 3 and 4).
There definitely seems to be some conflict going on in this classroom
environment. Conflict can happen for many reasons. In the specific instance of student 26
there may be multiple reasons why this student is rejected. This student is one of the
younger students in the class. He may have trouble communicating with other students.
He also may not have had the chance to get to share his strengths with his peers. Students
may feel that they wouldn’t gain anything from a relationship with this particular student.
Group building activities may help in this situation. Some of the activities mentioned
earlier would be beneficial to this situation. The teacher may be able to improve some of
these issues by placing the children in heterogeneous groups and by developing shared
goals in the classroom setting. These goals could also be carried over into the social areas
of the education environment such as lunch or recess. By using the Class Expectation
Survey from Shmuck’s book (S&S, 183), the teacher may get a better idea if the students
understand the expectations. If the students understand the teachers expectations and their
peers expectations there will be less likely to be conflict.
Many of the same issues that have been mentioned above apply to the final
Sociograms. This time the students were asked whom they would choose to work with in
an academic situation. In this particular Sociogram there is a male student that chooses to
work with two female students. This choice is not a mutual choice. This particular student
may have high expectations of the two girls study skills. He may feel that by working
with one or both of these girls that he will do better on the activity. All of the younger
students chose at least one older student as someone that they would like to work with on
this particular task. This clearly shows that an accepted norm of the class is that older
students have more experience and knowledge in regards to academic activities. The
majority of the nominations are among students of the same sex and of the same age
group. At the same time I do think it would be beneficial for the students to work in
groups where the members varied in age. The teacher would need to be aware of this
when grouping the students together for activities. Heterogeneous grouping may help in
this situation The teacher would randomly select students to work together; in this type of
grouping students would most likely work with others who they many not necessarily
choose to work with.
We need to refocus our thinking when it comes to classroom environment and
management as a way to build relationships and prepare kids for the future. We need to
work to create inclusive school and classroom communities. Mara Sapon-Shevin states
that the goal of inclusion is “to acknowledge those differences and create a classroom
community that works with those differences (and sometimes around those differences)
so that every student can feel a sense of connection and belonging”(Sapon-Shevin, 1999).
By collecting data and analyzing the way a classroom and its students relate to each other
one can adapt and support the needs of all students and encouraged a cooperative learning
environment.
Figure Three
Figure Four
References
Sapon – Shevin, Mara. (1999). Because We Can Change The World. Needham
Heights: Allyn & Bacon
Schmuck, R. & Schmuck, P. (2001). Group Processes in the Classroom. Boston:
McGraw Hill.
http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermalw/sociometryfiles/socio_introduction.htmlx
4/25, 2005
http://www.classroomsociometrics.com/. 4/25, 2005