The Challenge and Reward of Working in a Group

The sixth graders did a wonderful K'Nex cars project for math.

It was a design and data gathering challenge. But what interested me the most was how the kids did or didn't get along as they worked in groups.

The boys in this photo worked extremely well together during all phases of the project. They were all engaged and they all contributed, despite there being some personalities and voices that were stronger than others.

Some of this success comes from the students doing many in-class activities in groups during the year and from having clear instructions and time limits. A few other groups struggled at times though, and one came to a complete halt.

The stalled group reached stalemate because one of the group members (Miss E) did not like the decisions the two other group members were making, although they were considering her input, and happened to be two of the most cooperation-minded students in the class. Miss E is an extremely intelligent, creative, strong-willed sixth grader, with an amazing work ethic. However she does sometimes get swamped by her overabundant creative impulses. Even on independent projects, she often has too many (good) ideas, and suffers from trying to cram them all into the project of the moment.

At one point, Miss E was sitting separately from the other two students, drawing a meticulously detailed, beautifully labeled diagram of their K'Nex car. She said that she wanted to work on her own project and not in a group because the other girls were not communicating with her well. My CT was matter-of-fact: you have to do it in a group; work it out. My CT did also give the other two some guidance about how to reunite: wait until Miss E finishes her drawing, then continue working together. This did actually work, though I hadn't been sure it would. Thinking about it afterward, I see that my CT's response (which did have a streak of frustration in it), in the end challenged the girls to work it out as quickly as possible, and they were up to the task.

I do think Miss E genuinely suffers because of others' behavior - she is clearly angry at other students when they are not conscientious or when they are just goofy. But the other two girls, who are also high academic achievers, get frustrated too. I asked them if the other students in the class being noisy and boisterous distracts them when they are trying to do their work, and they said yes, and not only that, but they are often seated right next to the noisiest  kids because the teacher wants to separate those kids from their friends. In fact, they said that this has been happening for years at the school, just because of the mix of the kids in their grade.

This motivates me to try some new things during the rest of the school year. As I take over teaching more and more, I want to introduce a few new ways of doing things, especially during transitions and group work times. My CT is encouraging about this, so I feel lucky there.

In subsequent blog posts I will report what I tried and how it worked, or didn't work. Either way I'm sure I will gain new information about teaching and about these particular kids. My Yardsticks book (by Chip Wood) says that kids this age "appreciate teachers who listen and respond to their suggestions for changes in routines, when realistic," so that will be my next step.

Kids Care Who their Audience Is

It was interesting to see how my CT handled a problem that came up with the sixth grade students. Some of the students had gotten carried away writing their fictional stories. Their stories included violent scenes where they had used the names of their friends in class - for example, "A sea monster came along and ripped Ralph's head off."



Their intention was to make each other laugh - it was silly, gratuitous violence; I would call it going for a "cheap laugh."


My CT handled it with authenticity and in a well-considered way when she talked with the students. In speaking to me about it, she said she understood that 
some of this is fitting with the kids' development stage. 
But the thing she said that got an audible groan from the kids was that some of them must have forgotten that the sixth graders would be reading their completed stories to their third grade buddies.

It was amazing to see how instantly the kids were able to understand how inappropriate some of their stories were after they got that piece of information. The sixth graders love their reading buddies, so they did care about the effect their writing could have on them. With some guidelines for revision, they were able to make the stories o.k. for the little kids (e.g., bullets become marshmallows). It was such a nice example of the power of knowing who you are writing for.

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Good Questions

I’m thinking about how much we assume about kids. I keep going back to Vivian Paley and her talent for connecting with kids in a meaningful, non-judgmental way. In You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, she asked students at her school for advice about the rule she was interested in implementing in her kindergarten class. How often do we ask kids for advice?

My third grade reading/writing buddy, Miss C, is very bright and creative.  After we met and chatted a while, I asked her what she thought about spelling as a subject, since I was about to have her do a spelling exercise. She said, “I’m really good at spelling but it’s boring because it doesn’t give me much to work with.” It turns out she is quite articulate about what is challenging, boring, or interesting to her at school, and she is able to describe her learning strategies, too. I hadn’t anticipated getting this much good information from such a simple question.

In the article “The Power of Questions,” the author, teacher Annie Huynh, would find one of her third grade students, Natalie, “frequently talking or staring around the room [instead of reading].” Ms. Huynh decided to sit down with Natalie and talk with her about reading rather than applying more classroom management techniques to get her to stay “on task.” Together they uncovered information more likely to help the student choose books that are suited to her interests.

Why would a student take the risk to allow us access to their thoughts and feelings unless we have earned it by forging respectful relationships with them? I would love to hear examples you have seen of questions that elicited meaningful answers from kids, or examples of questions that shut kids down instead. I will look for examples in the comments section.

Thanks, and cheers.

What are my expectations for myself?

I've been working a little too hard, trying to keep up with everything for school and with my other obligations, but I am realizing how much I need to look for efficiencies wherever I can. It's hard to lower my expectations for myself.

Some of the time when I've stayed up late to finish work, I feel like it's completely worth it, as I really want to learn all I can now while I'm a still a student. I think that my categories have been too sharply drawn though.
As teacher, I will always be a student.

One thing that was missing from my teaching metaphor, the elephant shrew, is that even though it may have never been observed by human eyes, it surely spends time sleeping.

So off I go.

"I can't imagine life without ham!"

A third grade girl said this to me: "I can't imagine life without ham!"

A first grader was very emphatic: "I'll tell you one thing: math is EVERYWHERE!"

 I say: Enthusiasm is such a tonic.

What is a book? What is a map?

This is work from an art lesson I did with my third grade dyad kids. The kids made altered books with personal maps. Since they have been learning how to use maps, I showed them some unusual maps from a book called You Are Here: Personal Maps and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon.

One is below; it's a Japanese illustration of human internal organs and shows lots of little workers doing their various body jobs. Surrounding the body is text on the subject of how to eat to stay healthy.

Here is a kid wearing his in-progress altered book over his face.

This project raises questions about what a book is and what a map is, and what's behind our values around using books in an unconventional way. It's a very big deal to the kids to fold the pages of a book, and I love hearing their ideas about that.

The assistant librarian at a different school saw me doing a similar project and said, "Oh, I don't know what Mr. K would say about this." Mr. K is the wonderful school librarian. Later that day I showed him the book project, and he said he was thinking about writing a grant for some kind of art installation in the hall, and that our project might be good for that. 

This project works as a kind of scrapbook for the kids. They can fill the book with personal maps about trips they have taken, subjects or activities that are meaningful to them, things they would like to do someday. The student above let us know about a trip she took at a very important transition time in her life.

I have taught a similar lesson before where the kids wrote poems based on the story in the book. They cut and folded and twisted the pages into a tree. Then they glued the poems onto the endpapers, and wrote words from the book or poem onto leaves on the end of the branches.

Altered books allow so many possibilities for how to represent information, and so much potential for rich conversations with kids.

How do they see themselves?

I'm really intrigued by these self-portraits the third graders in my dyad placement have made. They made them in their first month of school, so I have only seen the finished products. They don't have the kids' names on them either, which makes them fascinating to look at. Once when I was studying them, a student came up to me and said she didn't like the way hers turned out. She pointed out hers, and I looked at it for a moment. It can be tempting to say something to the contrary when a child says they don't like something they made, to try to talk them out of feeling that way.