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  April  2001  Newsletter

Things you can do...

GUIDELINES FOR DOING GROUP WORK

1. Move into your groups quickly, sit close together, use first names, and get right to work. Do not engage in "off-task" discussion. Make it your responsibility to encourage everyone to participate.
     
2. Read aloud all instructions and given information. Getting all of the facts into the "record" helps ensure that everyone is aware of the assumptions and the expectations of the assignment.
    
3. Listen carefully to each other. Try not to interrupt. Respond to, or at least acknowledge, comments made or questions asked by other group members.
    
4. Do not accept confusion passively. If you do not understand the information that someone is presenting, try to paraphrase what was said, or ask someone to help you paraphrase it.
    
5. Ask for clarification whenever someone uses a word in a way that you find confusing. The correct use of terminology is an essential part of successful communication.
    
6. Do not split up the work. Everyone should focus their attention on the same problem at the same time. It is much easier to resolve conflicts when group members work together and check for agreement frequently.
    
7. Make a habit of explaining your reasoning or "thinking out loud", and ask others to do the same. The process of constructing and refining explanations helps everyone to relate the information being presented to what they already know.
    
8. Monitor your group's progress... It is important, and appropriate, to ask each other how what you are doing will help your group complete the assignment.
    
9. If your group gets stuck, review and summarize what you've done so far. This process creates new opportunities for group members to ask questions, and often it will reveal important connections that have been overlooked.
    
10. Question-asking is the engine that drives... investigations. Re-read the guidelines above and identify as many different ways as you can to generate questions during group work.

BOOKS YOU CAN READ...

Leaping The Abyss: Putting Group Genius To Work
by Chris Peterson, Gayl Pergamit, Christopher Fuller, Pete Durand (Illustrator), Jolynn Steffan (Illustrator)
Paperback - August 1997

There is power within groups, a hidden opportunity to build a team of dynamic commitment to a future effort within a company or organization.

by Jeanne Gibbs
This is a wonderful book to build community in the classroom.

This new edition shows teachers and administrators how to reach students by developing a caring environment as the foundation for growth and learning. Material details how to teach essential collaborative skills, design interactive learning experiences, work with multiple learning styles, foster the development of resiliency, and support school community change.

Group Genius

..."group genius," a collective creativity so powerful, energizing, and transformative that organizations ranging from restaurant chains to the U.S. military's aerospace test program have turned frustrating dead ends into hugely successful ventures...

An Article by by Paul Roberts
photographs by Darryl Estrine
from FC issue 11, page 202

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/11/genius.html

Teamwork is the quintessential contradiction of a society grounded in individual achievement. - Marvin Weisbord

Coming together is a beginning
Staying together is progress
Working together is success
- Henry Ford

The Cooperative Learning Center is a Research and Training Center focusing on how students should interact with each other as they learn and the skills needed to interact effectively.

The truly committed cooperative learning group is probably the most productive tool humans have. Creating and maintaining truly committed cooperative groups, however, are far from easy. In most situations cooperative groups are rare, perhaps because many individuals (a) are confused about what is (and is not) a cooperative group and (b) lack the discipline required to implement the basics of cooperative efforts in a rigorous way in every lesson.

Not all groups are cooperative groups (Johnson & F. Johnson, 1997). Placing people in the same room, seating them together, telling them they are a cooperative group, and advising them to "cooperate," does not make them a cooperative group. Study groups, project groups, lab groups, committees, task forces, departments, and councils are groups, but they are not necessarily cooperative. 

1. Pseudo groups are groups whose members have been assigned to work together but they have no interest in doing so. There is competition at close quarters--members may block each other's achievement, communicate and coordinate poorly, mislead and confuse each other, loaf, and seek a free ride. The result is that the sum of the whole is less than the potential of the individual members.

2. Traditional groups are groups whose members agree to work together, but see little benefit from doing so. There is individualistic work with talking. Members interact primarily to share information and clarify how to complete the tasks. Then they each do the work on their own. Their achievements are individually recognized and rewarded. The result is that some members benefit, but others may be more productive working alone.

3. Cooperative groups are groups whose members commit themselves to the common purposes of maximizing their own and each other's success. Its defining characteristics are a compelling purpose to maximize all members' productivity and achievement, holding themselves and each other accountable for contributing their share of the work to achieve the group's goals, promoting each other's success by sharing resources and providing each other support and encouragement, using social skills to coordinate their efforts and achieve their goals, and analyzing how effectively they are achieving their goals and working together. The result is that the sum of the whole is greater than the potential of the individual members.

4. High-performance cooperative groups are groups that meet all the criteria for a cooperative group and outperform all reasonable expectations, given their membership.

Not every group is effective. Almost everyone has been part of a group that wasted time, was inefficient, and generally produced poor work. Pseudo and traditional groups are characterized by a number of dynamics that impair their effectiveness (Johnson & F. Johnson, 1997), such as group immaturity, uncritically and quickly accepting members' dominant response, social loafing, free-riding, and group-think. Such hindering factors are eliminated by carefully structuring into the group five basic elements of cooperation.

The Basic Elements Of Cooperation

...There is nothing magical about telling individuals to work together as a team... The basic elements are positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing. These elements are a regimen that, if followed rigorously, will produce the conditions for effective cooperation.

http://www.clcrc.com/pages/SIT.html

Support and Assist organizations and individuals you recognize as working toward better understanding Group Work...

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