Students must be given regular opportunities to think about their learning and their behaviour in collaborative contexts.
Both formal and informal reflection is a critical component in improving collaborative work in the classroom. Much can be achieved simply through the questions we ask students as they work or at the end of a collaborative task.
Responses to the questions can be communicated in a range of ways – visual, written, oral, dramatic, etc. The questions may be particularly helpful at the end of an activity during ‘share time’. These questions include:
Both formal and informal reflection is a critical component in improving collaborative work in the classroom. Much can be achieved simply through the questions we ask students as they work or at the end of a collaborative task.
Responses to the questions can be communicated in a range of ways – visual, written, oral, dramatic, etc. The questions may be particularly helpful at the end of an activity during ‘share time’. These questions include:
- How well do you think your group worked today?
- How do you know you/your group worked well?
- What is one thing that you saw someone do or heard someone say that made it hard for your group to work well togeth
- What is one thing that you saw someone do or heard someone say that made it hard for your group to work well together?
- How did you feel when you were working in your group?
- How do you know when a group is working well?
- What does a good group look like? Feel like? Sound like?
- What was one thing you think you did really well to help your group?
- What is something you would like to do better next time?
- Why do you think it is a good idea to work in groups?
- How is it different to working by yourself ?
- When do you like to work with others/alone? Why?
- What did you learn from working in a team?
Strategy to tRy
- Fishbowl
Fishbowl is particularly useful as a means of explicating the processes required for effective group work. It allows students to observe group interaction and to reflect on what they see.
- Decide on a task to be completed by a small focus group. For example, the group may be set the task of brainstorming ideas about a topic, or coming to a consensus about a particular decision or plan – any task that involves a group working towards a shared goal or outcome.
- Invite the remaining students to form a circle (sitting or standing) around the focus group.
- Give students who are observing some guidelines/prompts such as the ones below and explain that they are to observe in silence.
Sample prompts for fishbowl observations:
- What do people do or say to help the group get the job done?
- What got in the way of the group getting the job done well?
- How do people solve problems when they arise?
- How does people’s body language affect the communication in the group?
- What do people do or say to help the group get the job done?
- Students in the observer roles then provide the group with feedback.
- Invite individuals from outside the fishbowl to come into the focus group (centre) and take the place of someone in the group to repeat the activity in a different way.
- Students take on a particular disposition or attitude during the task (for example, domineering or disinterested) and then discuss what effect this has on the group.
- Divide the class in half and have one half in the centre discussing an issue or topic while the others listen and observe. Then swap.
- Use ‘fishbowling’ incidentally. When you notice a group working particularly well, invite others to watch them (advise the group first).
- Ask one or more students to be ‘secret’ participant observers during class activity time and have them report back at the end of the session, noting the examples of great cooperative behaviour they saw during the session.
- Observers provide feedback in written form rather than orally.
I used to think, now I think....
I used to think . . . Now I think . . . This routine provides teachers and students with an opportunity to formally recognize a change in their thinking from the beginning of an Investigation to the end or from the start of a Problem to its conclusion. Students confront their original thinking about a concept and reflect on what has changed about that thinking. Acknowledging a change in thinking is powerful for all learners. This is easily done with sticky notes.