Tuesday, January 20, 2009
How can you tell the difference between groups creating productive noise and those in chaos?
At our meeting we discussed strategies for implementing cooperative learning. Briefly discuss how what you learned will impact your cooperative learning groups in the near future. What was the one biggest learning you took away from this session?
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The last TAP session on cooperative groups provided me with more criterion for assessing productive group work. Sometimes it's difficult to discern exactly what students are taking away from a group task in terms of collaborative skills. My current group task rubric has two content components, one mathematical communication component, and one group process component. Since the TAP session, I've gone back to that rubric and revised it, adding one more group process component from the example cooperative learning rubric.
The "big idea" that I took from our collaborative learning session is that collaborative learning skills must be TAUGHT. It's easy to think that students (especially by ninth grade) have developed listening and communication skills, but I'm realizing that explicit goals in this area (and assessment of) are crucial in pushing them onto the next level of quality, productive communinication in the classroom.
Here is to TEACHING collaborative learning skills, and having specific criterion by which to assess such skills!
The TAP session on cooperative learning provided me with a lot of food for thought. It was especially helpful to look at several cooperative learning rubrics and compare them. Most importantly I gained insight into how to use these rubrics more efficiently for my students in special education. Often the students I work with get “lost” when they are introduced to a rubric that has a lot of categories and wording. I liked the idea of organizing the rubric with the higher level of performance (usually the ‘4’)on the left margin. That way, if students have a hard time tracking through the entire explanation of the rubric, they will be more likely to understand what is required to earn a high score. I also liked the idea of adding on categories to a cooperative learning rubric (or any rubric) gradually throughout the school year. The students will be less likely to become overwhelmed with too much information, and more likely to truly understand the criteria of the one or two categories that have been introduced.
I also liked the idea of starting with a basic rubric with very few words and adding to it throughout the year. In second grade very few of my students can take in the amount of information that I put on my rubrics. This leads me to stay away from showing them a hard copy. I think that I will try this strategy and see how it goes.
I liked the idea of using two rubrics at the high school level. One that assessed the over all finished product and one that assessed each individuals contribution to the project. This is my biggest challenge with group with. It is hard to who if everyone contributed or who really did all the work.
How do I know when groups are being productive?
I often find questioning tells me how productive they are. Those who can tell me where they are at and what they are currently working on are generally making progress. I often find those that are lost or distrcted can't tell me what they are supposed to be doing or how much progress they have made.
I agree that I need start finding ways to teach those collabrative learning skills to my students rather than assuming they come to me with those. I see alot of 9th graders who do not know how to work in group setting.
I really enjoyed our last session on cooperative learning. I found the samples (discussing the organization) and overall discussion very helpful. I also like the idea of starting with a basic rubric (using pictures) then adding to it throughout the year. In first grade each task needs to be explained, modeled then practiced. Once students were confident using the rubric additional pieces could be added.
We work in cooperative groups during science; these rubrics can be very helpful when students assess their contributions along with the teacher. It really makes them accountable to their group and offers a time for self-reflection (which must also be taught). I can see using rubrics in other content areas as we move through the year.
After the last TAP meeting I started thinking more critically about how to structure group assignments in my class. I remembered the need to clearly define roles and to keep groups small (four). The biggest thing I took out of our discussion was the need to teach, model, and practice what "groupwork" looks like.
Last week I tried out my first cooperative grouping for the "book clubs" in my literacy block. Each group had a series of questions and one activity to accomplish after reading a chapter together. I had extra parents in to help monitor the group interaction, redirect students, and also write down "compliments" for students who were using the skills I taught (ex: asking a groupmember if they had a chance to share their thoughts, or if they wanted to add anything.) After each "book club" session we came together as a class and wrote down what went really well and what we needed to work on. All weeks students rotated who got to perform the two "roles" I set up for the group activities (discussion leader and secretary) - and each day the duties for that role became clearer and clearer. On the second day we acted out what those roles looked like, just so it was very clear. The students responded well. They enjoyed the oppurtunity to lead, as well as the chance to be heard equally.
What I still would like to include is an oppurtunity for the kids to quickly but regularly self-evaluate their group. Not just an informal discussion as a class, but a rubric that the group gets to use individually to rate themselves.
I constantly struggle with this question - are students working productively or are they just goofing around? In the science lab this is important for safety (!) as well as student learning.
Since our meeting, I have often had students work in small groups, and it can be hard to tell if the students are actually helping each other. The student who just copies inevitably does poorly on the assessments - and yet how can I help him/her see how DIRECTLY this work affects their future success?
In the next few weeks, I am having students design their own lab activity, and I am going to use the rubrics and ideas from our meeting to develop a group lab rubric for students to score themselves and each other after the lab is completed. I want to make sure they notate exactly who was doing what along the way, so they can refer to this and not just write what they assume their lab partners do. (Which I am too often guilty of myself)
"How can you tell the difference between groups creating productive noise and those in chaos?"
Many valid points were brought up during this TAP meeting. I like the stategy of exit slips. Exit slips can be used as an assessment from activities or used to transition from group work to open discussions. The idea of productive noise is to allow students the oppertunity to express themselves in a manner that they can and are compfortable sharing/expressing information. Monitoring students through ways such as: listening to their conversations, using exits slips, and having students share what they spent their time doing are all ideas that I can include in my classroom.
Since our last session, I have been thinking a lot about how to better structure my groups. When I divide my kids up in groups, I have been making sure to assign jobs to promote cooperative learning. I also made a GLAD-type poster on Cooperation, and had a discussion with my kids about what cooperation looks and sounds like so they know what is expected of them. As an incentive, I give out points to groups who are showing cooperation.
I circulate the classroom and listen to the conversations. If the students are engaged in on-task discussion, then I know that it is "learning noise." If I hear words that are unrelated to our topic of study, then I know it is off-task behavior. Usually giggling is a sign of off-task behavior because it's rare that our topics of study are particularly funny. Students engaged in discussion usually have their heads together around the table and are focusing on the project or discussion peice at hand.
By listening to group discussions during a lesson or activity, I can often tell by their conversations whether or not they are using that time productively. If I am hearing vocabulary related to the lesson, or hearing students conversate like they are thinking of ways to solve a problem, I can tell they are engaged (oppossed to listening to non-academic related topics being discussed). I also have been trying to incorporate more GLAD strategies into the collaborative parts of my lessons. I do this by giving group points to groups that I do see and hear are on task, as well as working cooperatively to solve a problem. I like the GLAD idea of having each student mark their part of the the group work with a different colored pencil. That way all students in the group are held accountable for contributing an idea, and they know they need to manage their time, stay on task, and cooperative to get the job done successfully.
The biggest lingering "aha!" is the one I promptly told a lot of my friends - many of us teach in informal adult learning situations, and the little bit thrown in there about group sizes and peak group size was new to all of us! We've been regularly using the size of a table to decide on group size. The debate there is now down to whether 3 or 5 is the "tiebreaker peak", or better than the other when you want an odd number of participants to force a decision instead of a tie.
In my classroom, learning and discussion groups are important for growth in behavior skills but challenging - I find I'm still stuck with pairs or triads because of interpersonal issues, or that we're establishing learning groups by academic level not numbers. We end up with one division for specialists (3rd, and the intermediates), another division for therapy (one 3rd grader is notably more mature than the others so he joins the intermediates), and the academics are 2@5th, 2@4th, 5@3rd, and 1 part 3rd part 1st.
Never a dull moment in ISEP!
Michel Plemmons
Sometimes it is difficult to discern chaos from productive noise when the students are especially active. I have found the best strategy to be frequently stopping in with each group and asking pertinent questions relating to the task at hand. This way, I can gauge the progress each group is making toward achieving the goal of the activity.
Something useful that I took away from the TAP session was the idea of providing each group with specific roles for members. This way, everyone is accountable for something and it reduces confusion among group members.
As an eighth grade Language Arts teacher, I use collaborative groupings often. However, I find my biggest challenge is getting them to stop talking about their social lives for long enough to get their work done. Something that has helped me from our meeting on cooperative groups is forming a rubric that breaks down the assignment into specific jobs. I have found that by giving each student a job they take more ownership in their work.
It was also very helpful to hear of so many different kinds of group work rubrics; I came away from our meeting with a lot of new ideas.
Lastly, I agree with Laura. I think it is so important to teach the students how to work effectively in their groups, even when they are in 8th grade!
Rubrics are something that I have found really useful in guiding my students. Showing them the expectations up front and then checking back frequently during the process has been really useful. However, I have also noticed that often times there is too much information for the students to completely grasp on the first time around and one idea I really like was the graduated rubric system or adding to a simple rubric throughout the year to make it more complex. I think this might also liven up the idea of rubrics for my students who may have become overly familiar with them.
In science, we do a lot of group work with labs. Each group member has an assigned letter (A, B, C, or D) and each letter has an assigned job. This really helps the kids work together instead of one group member working on the lab and the rest of the students just copying answers. I also constantly circulate the room and ask questions, listen in on conversations, and obeserve how students are working together. If I hear a group off task I will redirect them and they will generally stay on task afterwards. I think it is important to make sure that groups are working on the task at hand and asking thought provoking questions to help the students make connections and understand what they are doing.
Like many before me stated, one of the best ways to monitor group work activities is to listen in on the discussions. Make sure you are walking around the room visiting each group and redirecting when necessary.
I think when we begin our teaching career, it's hard to let go of control. We are nervous that if we give in too much to group work and student discussion, then there will be chaos. Students need to be taught how to work in groups and stay on task, but the end result of colaboration is definitely worth the effort.
In my Kindergartn classroom, students are constantly working in cooperative groups. I never thought about having students this age self-evalute how their work thier peers. Seeing the self-evaluaiton grid that was geared towards the primary possible showed me that this is something they can do. Plus teaching kids to be self reflective is always great!
Since the class, we have talked about each person's responsiblity when working as a group. We also tied in our previous discussions on respect.
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