In the world of K-12
education, we have popularized the importance of grouping students. In the
early 1970s, educators began organizing their students and structuring their
teaching to accommodate collaborative groups and cooperative learning.
Cooperative learning could
expose students to other points of view and, of course, help them learn how to
cooperate.
We know that many students do
not how to cooperate or simply are not inclined to cooperate. We have plenty of
students who prefer to work alone for a number of reasons and yet, we insist on
forcing our students into so-called teams. What we often don’t do is make sure
our students know how to listen to each other. We also rarely teach them how to
analyze and synthesize what they are hearing, how to ask questions, how to
monitor their behavior, etc.
One of the many challenges
for teachers is knowing how to group
their students. There is no shortage of research and books on grouping
students, but what’s interesting to note is how often the focus is on classroom
management as well as student learning.
I’m not saying we should
integrate collaborative groups and cooperative learning in our classrooms. But
as with any other strategy, I think we need to be mindful of why we are
grouping our students.
Not too long ago I was in a
classroom in which the students were in pods of three, so three desks were
clustered together. When I asked the teacher how she determined which students
should be together, she had no real response. Another teacher has his 9th
grade students in groups as well, the desk organized in groups of four. He has
rearranged his students in their groups to try to find the best mix of
personalities and learning styles. So it’s not the “low” reader with the “high”
reader, but kids who might actually collaborate and cooperate in their
learning.
He told me he tries to mix up
the groups periodically because he thinks there is some advantage to the
students to learn how to work with those who are less like themselves. This
teacher has some constraints based on the size of his classroom but he said he
toys around with the sizes of the groups periodically as well.
I’ve been thinking about this
because I’m often asked about strategies to group students and this teacher
grasped what I’ve been saying for years: the grouping is about and for the
students. If the students are in groups that make sense to them, classroom
management may be less of an issue.
Those collaborative
strategies can then draw from any students in the classroom at any time because
the collaborative structure is not limited by strict grouping parameters.
We should remember too that
while we might make fun of think/pair/share as a potentially overused strategy,
Kylene Beers and Mike Schmoker both assert that students working in pairs can
be effective for short periods of time, especially when used to promote
understanding.
Think about how noisy a
classroom can get when kids are working together—and let’s assume those groups
of 3 or 4 are on task. As the volume in the room increases, the kids counter
not being able to hear by talking even louder.
But if you put your students
in pairs, they can and will work more quietly and may work more efficiently
because there is nowhere to hide—they have to listen to each other. Of course,
design task comes into play, but that’s a different conversation. And if you
have your students sharing technology, it is more likely that both can and will
be participative because not only can they hear and be heard, but they both can
see and they both can touch.
Students can learn
cooperatively and they can learn to collaborate. Using pairs at the beginning
of the school year and then occasionally throughout the school year enables
students to practice a number of communication and learning skills, but also
helps them discover and practice their voices for learning.
You can find a podcast of this post at https://soundcloud.com/teaching-revolution.
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