Establishing routines and expectations at the beginning of a new school year is critical to the success of the rest of the year. If you plan on including collaboration in your classroom, you’re probably wondering how to establish group work guidelines with a new class so that you see the best results.
Let’s face it: By junior grades and middle school, the kids have worked together in groups enough to know what works and what doesn’t, and they’re very good at voicing their concerns.
This year, I spent a class period talking with them about group work. What I wanted to know from them was:
- What do you enjoy about working in groups?
- What works well when you’re working in groups?
Hands were up all over the room, but I’ll admit I got an even larger reaction from my next questions:
- What do you dislike most about working in groups?
- What things make group work fail?
As my students shared, I wrote, and we compiled a great list of what group work looks like and doesn’t look like. These points have become our Group Work Success Criteria, which I’ve posted on a prominent bulletin board in our classroom.
We’ll return to these all year long as we collaborate on learning activities.
We have also been discussing the quality of the contributions during group work. Accountable talk is very important to the success of collaborative tasks, so I’ve also posted some stems for my students to use to get them started.
These are available in my TPT store in a huge bundle of 50 stems, but you can grab a free sample right here on the blog!
You might also be interested in the tips and resources I’ve shared in this post:
If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with friends and colleagues on Facebook or pin it on Pinterest:
