What's Your Procedure For That?: A Classroom Management Guide From Morning Meeting to Dismissal by Cannon Patrice

Author:Cannon, Patrice [Cannon, Patrice]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
Published: 2020-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

Procedure for Students Working in Collaborative Groups

Think about your time in a faculty meeting, a professional development, or a college course. Consider a class where the teacher did all the talking or lecturing. How much did you learn or retain?

When I was in school, my teachers used the “drill and kill” method of teaching. Morning work consisted of a page with fifty multiplication facts. We had to get these correct in order to move to the next level of multiplication. It was the same with reading. By the time we graduated high school, we went off to college with information committed to memory. Although there is a place for memorization and recall, we also went off to college without knowing how to use the information which we memorized.

I have found that many teachers are afraid of getting out of their comfort zone. Teachers tend to believe they are the holder of all knowledge. They believe classroom management consists of keeping ultimate control in the classroom. Their voice is the only one that matters. They believe releasing students to learn is equivalent to releasing the classroom into a chaotic storm from which they cannot escape. It boils down to fear. We teach how we learned. In this way, collaborative groups are a fairly new concept. I know that, when I was in school, all of my teachers delivered lecture-style instruction. I was usually that student constantly being told to be quiet or pay attention. At some point in the classroom, direct teaching has a place. But after directly teaching a concept, you have to give students time to process the information. The best way to process through something is with someone else. Think about how you process through a problem. It is not uncommon for teachers, especially first year teachers trying to develop their pedagogical skills, to stand and deliver. We are trying to build relationships, maintain our classroom management, and survive teaching altogether.

One way to have students process through the information is by collaborative grouping. This puts learning into the students’ hands, while allowing the teacher to monitor for student evidence of learning. He or she is able to provide rapid-interventions to those who need it.

How do we know if students comprehend information if the teacher is the only one talking?

Teachers have to intentionally plan for time spent incorporating collaborative groups in the classroom. Students are not only being released to work together; instead, we are intentionally planning questions and tasks which give us a clearer picture of how students perceive information.

Gathering student evidence helps the teacher determine if they should: retreat (stop moving forward completely and build more background knowledge); reteach (provide a rapid-intervention to a small group or reteach the whole class); or reassemble (bring everybody back together and move on to the next skill).

While incorporating cooperative groups, another procedure should involve assigning clearly defined roles.

Some roles in student groups may be:

Facilitator – The group leader who makes sure everyone contributes to the learning while staying focused on the task.

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