I just had one of the most enjoyable classes that I’ve taught in a long time. It was focused on group work.
In preparation for an upcoming Education Research Reading Room Podcast episode (Due out June 1st, 2019) with Neil Mercer, I’ve recently finished reading his book ‘Interthinking’ about the role of, and precursors to, effective collaborative thought. Within the book Neil, and his co-author Karen Littleton write a lot about the value of interthinking and this got me thinking about how I’ve been keen for quite some time now to experiment with fostering more collaborative work of this kind. This is an interest that was initially sparked through my ERRR interview with James Mannion, and I’ve been very curious about the topic ever since.
To the end of promoting better interthinking both Neil and James pointed me to the Thinking Together resources. Over the recent holiday break I read through all of these resources, paying particular attention to the Thinking Together lessons (freely available about half way down the page), and decided I was going to have a crack at my own approach first day back after the term break.
Context: Year 11 physics, 90 minute class, topic of electric circuits.
Goals:
- By the end of the lesson students have an increased ability to draw circuit diagrams and build electric circuits based upon a circuit description.
- By the end of the lesson students are working more effectively in groups, based upon a set of co-constructed ‘ground rules’ for working together.
The interthinking resources suggest three lessons: the first exploring what makes a good talker and a good listener; the second exploring the concept of ‘ground rules’ and then supporting the students to collectively come up with their own; and the third applying the ground rules to a mathematics problem (though they could be used for anything).
I was keen to follow roughly the same approach, but to alter the approach so as to fit it into a single 90-minute lesson, embed it in the year 11 physics content I was already teaching, and to tangibly highlight to students the value of establishing, and following, a set of ground rules through an accessible ‘before' and ‘after' comparison.
The process:
Students entered the class and I told them ‘Today you’re going to be working in groups to build some electric circuits’. I gave them very little more than that and simply divided them into groups and told them to get stuck in. The groups were based on similar achievement levels, I used results from the last test to rank students, group them into threes, then made minor adjustments based upon my understanding of who was likely to work well together/not go off topic. I chose similar achievement levels as I thought it would promote more authentic interthinking and less of a teacher/pupil dynamic within groups. Before they started I got them to paper scissors rock and said that whomever lost was to read the instructions to the rest of the group (maybe it should have been whomever won?), the idea of this paper scissors rock activity is that if you get people to play games together, and especially if you get them to do activities in sync, it makes them feel more connected and cohesive as a group.
They then collected resources and jumped into the task. Here’s what the task sheet looked like.
At the 30 minute mark I told students to return to their tables and get out a pen or pencil. I then gave each student one of the following sheets.
Each student marked their group, and then I asked them to return to their groups and to complete the following worksheet, saying a few words about how I wanted them to talk together, and modelling an example (it’s written at the top of the below sheet also). This ‘mark individually then come together and negotiate on an agreed upon score’ approach is based on the Quality Teaching Rounds model as described by Jenny Gore in ERRR episode 14.
Once one group had arrived at the ‘For use later’ section of the above sheet, I got the whole class’ attention and said the following (I had scripted it).
When this lesson was introduced, on that first sheet, we were thinking about improving our knowledge of electrical circuits and circuit diagrams. However, this lesson actually has two goals. One of them is about electrical circuits, but the other is about us learning how to work better as teams and to better be able to learn together.
We’ve now taken some time to reflect upon how we've worked as groups so far, and we did this by comparing our work against a set of ‘criteria’ that, based upon research into effective group work, I as the teacher came up with. Now, you may have thought that these criteria or were really good ones. However, you may have thought that some of them were silly, or, you may have some ideas of criteria for effective group work that you’d like to add.
So, what I’d like you to do once you’ve finished grading your group together is to pick the four criteria from the list that you think are most important, and to turn them into ground rules. For example, you could turn the criteria ‘Group members sat or stood in a way so that everyone could see everyone else and easily interact’ into the ground rule ‘We arrange ourselves so that we can easily see each other and communicate’. Write these at the bottom of your sheet, then make up two of your own and add them as well.
After all groups had done this we ran a mini-plenary and, as a class, collated/amalgamated all of the ground rules that the groups had come up with. After each group offered up their ground rules, I asked ‘Are any of these rules similar to any that have already been offered?’, ‘Could we combine them?’, ‘Does anyone have any clarifying questions to ask about these rules?’, and ‘Would anyone like to suggest any changes to these proposed ground rules?’
After this plenary, here’s what the students came up with.
(btw, this is the first poster I’ve ever put up in a class. I thought the activity was so effective that I finally took the plunge!)
Now, I would definitely re-word some of these if I were writing them myself, but I felt it important not to modify the language offered by students too much so that students had ownership over what they had created.
Following this (we were now at the 60 minute mark) I asked the groups to re-commence the task, paying particular attention to how they were communicating.
We spent the final 5 minutes of class with me asking each of the groups ‘What was the impact of using the ground rules?', ‘Was the group work better, worse, or the same as before the ground rules, and why?’
Here are the students’ responses:
Group 1
-There was more communication going around and group effort to build the circuits.
Group 2
-We made sure everybody understood and we were more efficient doing it (the circuit problem solving).
-Everyone shared their opinions and we solved the problems more quicker than before.
Group 3
-I think it was the same, but the only difference was that we solved the steps quicker
-We talked more to each other, and explained more than before
Group 4
-I don’t think was different to a massive degree, but it had an effect.
-We didn’t talk over each other anymore.
-When we followed the rules we worked faster, communication was much better, more works are happening, less silliness, so the work was better. So like now, the first half hour, they were only doing the first one and they can’t do it, then when they just followed the rules, let the other one, like talk, then every time we just finish like three circuits in like half an hour. So I think, the good thing about this is much work, good communication, more team work, and yeah, that’s it.
I was actually amazed at the transformation between the first 30 minutes of the class and the final 30 minutes. The quality of the discussions really went up a notch, students were asking many more ‘why’ questions and planning more thoroughly before just plugging in circuit components and flicking the switch on. But the thing that surprised me the most was the impact it had on their ability to collectively problem solve. I hadn’t actually considered this at all and (anecdotally, and from the student reports) the groups all seemed to be solving the problems much faster in the final 30 minutes when compared to the first 30, as they spoke about in their comments.
This is something I’ll be doing with my other classes too and I’ll build on this in future lessons by working with students to make some cue cards (an idea from the Thinking Together resources) with phrases on them such as ‘What do you think (person’s name)?’ ‘Why is that?’ ‘Do we all agree?’ ‘I agree because…’ ‘I disagree because…’ and ‘Could you please explain to me…’ in order to reinforce the lessons we’ve already learnt, and consolidate the language required for effective communication.
I’m also looking forward to reflecting upon how I can use this approach when asking students to reflect upon our weekly progress checks. I’m still finding that, even despite the lauded ‘progress check reflection template’ approach, students aren’t taking as much from our weekly tests as they could be, and I think that more effective interthinking could be a powerful tool to help with this.
Watch this space…