Information Age Education

Cooperative Learning: Group Roles

January 25th, 2007

When students work in groups they often need support in how to help each other. So today we spent about 6 minutes reflecting on the cooperative learning roles and what the different people in the group might say or do.

Since the roles rotate each week, everyone will be all things at one point or another. As I like to think about it, “Everyone will be The Compassionate One at sometime.” This is a short activity to start building team rapport and support the students in their different cooperative learning roles.

Circular Silent Reflection
1. Each student wrote his or her role on the top of a scratch piece of paper.
2. Students had about a minute to write what are things that a person in that role would say or do in the group. I suggested that they may want to write quotes. For example, The Organizer could be heard saying, “I’ll go get the materials.”
3. After a minute, I asked students to pass the papers clockwise and read what was written.
4. Each student had about a minute to add additional comments.
5. Then I told them to pass the papers again and read what was written and add comments. This was repeated until the person received his original paper.
6. After that, the rotation cycle was about 30 seconds to read the last comments on each paper. So the papers cycle through to each person again.

I wanted to provide more support to the groups and their members because I know that kids have great intentions but sometimes lack the ways to appropriately express their thoughts. This activity is a quick way to give them additional ways of positively engaging with their table mates.

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Entry Filed under: Education, Cooperative Learning