The Handbook for Poor Students, Rich Teaching. Eric Jensen
help you implement this, use the lesson-planning worksheet in figure 2.2 to choose a daily lesson and some activities you plan to use with it. Note whether this activity constitutes individual or collaborative time, and then gauge how much classroom time you need to provide students to complete the activity.
Figure 2.2: Track time between individual and collaborative activities.
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Note that on any given day, you might split social and individual time seventy–thirty or even ten–ninety. The goal is to plan out your instructional activities so that, over a week, it all evens out. In the next section, we’ll take a look at the collaborative activities that enhance social time to connect for success.
Collaborative Strategies
Much of what makes social activity work (to the degree it does) is our own biology. We are not just driven to be social; we are genetically primed for it. Because of this, students’ emotional side gets a big boost when you add interdependency to lessons, which makes for more robust effect sizes. Interdependency means that student success depends on another student’s success, which raises everyone’s effort level. Four students in a cooperative group or team has a 0.69 effect size on student achievement (Hattie, 2009).
In the next section, I begin with strategies for building effective cooperative groups and teams that foster interdependency. In the sections that follow, we’ll look at some other ways to build interdependency in the form of study buddies, mentors, and temporary partners. As you implement these in your classroom, remember it takes time to build and maintain relationships. Be patient, and your students will benefit from the good that comes from them.
Cooperative Groups and Teams
Ultimately, teams are just structures, and by themselves, they will accomplish nothing. Your students need social cues, prompts, and systems to establish and guide productive group behaviors. Let’s break down how teams can work. In my middle school classes, teams of five seemed to work best. For elementary school, temporary cooperative groups of four or established teams of four work well. I have drawn the following ideas from many sources (for example, see Kagan, Kagan, & Kagan, 1997).
• Allow teams to be unique: Let each pick its own unique name, slogan, cheer, celebration, and logo. This builds social status and camaraderie. Give students time for each of these when building teams.
• Give everyone a unique and valued role: Roles engage more of the class and build positive interdependence (examples include summarizer, leader, personal trainer, stretch leader, energizer, joke teller, and courier).
• Set class norms for all group behaviors: This reduces students acting out and builds individual accountability. For example, share three things you expect every team to do, such as (1) contribute to the class, (2) be on time, and (3) support each other.
• Give the group occasional downtime: This allows for random acts of relationship building and fun. (Limit downtime to two to four minutes.)
• Ensure the team works together daily: Use procedures and rituals that involve everyone, every day. (You can learn more about designing effective rituals and find a worksheet to create some in chapter 18, page 191.) Foster equal participation using turn-taking that leadership and group norms regulate.
• Encourage friendly competition: This builds teamwork and effort and fosters identity. Consider the following ways to use friendly competition.
• Student groups or teams can compete against each other when the topic is less academic and more behavioral. For example, what group is the fastest to get cleaned up at the end of class, who has the most team spirit, who will be the first to learn everyone’s name in class, who has the best team cheer, or who has the coolest name?
• Students can compete against either the teacher or an outside force (another school, class, or virtual team)—an “us against the world” mentality.
• Student teams can compete against themselves. They record and display their prior scores or marks, and each week they try to best their last score.
For cooperative groups and teams to be most effective, coach the team leader, and ask him or her to coach and teach the team how to improve. Make it clear to the groups that this is the leader’s role. Reciprocal teaching (students teaching peers) has a strong effect size of 0.74 (Hattie, 2009). To help you form cooperative teams among your students, use the planning sheet in figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3: Sheet for forming cooperative teams.
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Study Buddies
At the beginning of the year or semester, many teachers set students up with a semipermanent study buddy who takes responsibility for the success of his or her partner in that class. The students share phone numbers and email addresses so they can call, text, and email. When done well, study buddies tend to form a sibling-like relationship. As a teacher, create stakes in the relationship. Say, “If you want an A or B, you must help your partner get an A or B.” If one passes a test and the other does not, it’s a shared failure. A teacher who uses this strategy finds it helps students at the secondary level build relationships and learn to help one another.
Study buddies should sit next to each other in class and share key content as well as be a cheerleader for the other. They will each know the other’s progress and be mindful of changes in progress. Both can sign off on this process with their parents and the teacher. Give students time to make plans for what to do next after getting feedback on a quiz or any other formative assessment.
One way to assign study buddies is to have students write out a passion related to the subject area on an index card. That year or semester, students will work with another kindred soul who shares the same passion for change or a specific topic (Henderson, 2012). Using language arts as an example, you could have students complete the statement, “What I think needs changing in this world …” Figure 2.4 provides a template for a student contact card.
You can have students fill out cards like figure 2.4, collect them, and use them to sort students into similar interests and passions. You can pass out each student’s card to his or her partner and have them spend a few minutes getting to know each other, so that every buddy already knows the best way to contact each other.
Figure 2.4: Study buddy contact card.
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If students don’t want to work with the partner you assigned, give them some more time to work through the issue at hand using some collaboration-building tools like the one in figure 2.5 (page 24). Allocate relational time in your class to help students get to know their partner. Use simple one- to two-minute activities, and rotate them. For example, you could provide students with figure 2.5 and have them work together to answer just one question about