Setting Up Group Projects for Success
In my early years of teaching, I always idealized being the kind of teacher who let her students work collaboratively in groups, learning from each other and engaging in hands-on activities. But secretly, I hated doing group projects. They always disintegrated into chaos so quickly. I would spend most of the class period feeling frustrated with my students for being loud or not taking things seriously. In the end, we were left with a grumpy teacher and a bunch of wired students whose learning experience was questionable at best.
But then I learned a few ways to help add structure and expectations for my students, and it completely changed the experience. If it weren’t so cringey and "click-baity," the title of this article could be “These Three Things Changed the Way I Do Group Projects Forever.”
State Expectations Clearly
First, be clear about your expectations before you even break the students into groups. This is especially important if working in groups is rare for your students, or if you have tried it in the past and it’s been chaotic. You are going to need to establish some parameters so that students understand that this is still a time to focus, work diligently, and be respectful.
These guidelines might look different in different circumstances, depending on what type of project you are doing. As part of your preparation for the class time, you will want to think through what you want your expectations to be and how you will communicate them clearly to your students.
You might think about the following areas:
How loudly may students talk? Whisper voices only? Low voices? Only during certain times?
Where should students be? Sitting in their desks? On the floor? Outside in a certain area? Are they allowed to move around the room freely, or only with permission?
How much time do they have to complete the project? Plan to alert them a few times throughout the process (halfway point, ten minutes left, five minutes left, etc.)
What will they do when finished? Having some groups done and goofing off while others are still trying to work is not the way you want your class period to end.
What is the end product you are hoping for? What object, written product, worksheet, performance, etc. will each group produce?
Clarify Students’ Roles
Secondly, make sure each student knows what they will be doing when they are working with their group. If given the chance, some students will naturally do all the work and never stop to listen to anyone else. Others will happily ride on the coattails of those who are more confident, more academic, or more efficient than they are.
Also, students are often just learning how to work with others in a context like this. They don’t always know how to listen to someone with a differing viewpoint or what to do if two group members are disagreeing on how to do something (or how to kindly disagree with someone themselves).
Some coaching in these areas will be helpful. If you do this well at the beginning of the school year, you will not need to have these conversations again before every group project. Discuss various ways that students may experience conflict when working with others, and what they can do about it if it does. Give specific examples or role play what to say and what not to say in those situations.
Another thing that can be immensely helpful is giving each group member a particular role to fill during the project. This will vary based on the type of assignment the students are completing, but may include the following:
Leader (guides the group and keeps things on track)
Scribe (writes down observations, records data, etc.)
Measurer (uses a tool to gather data)
Calculator (does any math involved)
Organizer (gathers all materials or specimens, keeps them in order)
Researcher (looks up data or references sources to help the group)
Builder (constructs any necessary objects)
Artist (draws diagrams or pictures of the process)
You might want to let the group members decide amongst themselves which role each of them will fill, or you might want to assign roles beforehand, based off student strengths.
Engage Students in Assessment
The third thing that can level up productivity in a group project is ending with a self-assessment, peer assessment, or both. This will often look like a series of questions about the student’s participation, effort, focus, etc. It works well to give them a variety of options to choose from, such as “Always, sometimes, rarely, or never” in a given category.
[See attached examples of both a self-assessment and a peer assessment.]
This has a variety of benefits, a major one being that engaging in reflection after a learning experience can sometimes teach students as much as the project itself. It will help them to become more aware of how they interact with others, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they can contribute better next time.
Self and peer assessment also allows for a measure of accountability. If students know they will need to report on their own behavior or the behavior of their groupmates, they are more likely to engage well during the group project.
If your students aren’t used to doing self-assessment, take some time to talk about the importance of being honest. Giving themselves a higher mark than they know they deserve is not right, but neither is giving oneself a lower mark under a pretense of humility. Encourage them to honestly assess which description most accurately fits how they actually participated.
The same goes for peer assessment. Encourage them to be fair to the person they are assessing. Be clear that the only person who will see these peer evaluations is you (this removes an incredible pressure to not grade a friend poorly).
You may decide if these self and peer evaluations are factored into each student’s final grade on the project or are simply used as a way to encourage responsibility for their actions. If you do choose to take a grade from these assessments, make it a small percentage of their final grade so that another student’s potentially inaccurate scoring doesn’t negatively impact a student’s grade.
This may all sound like a lot of work. Wouldn’t it take much less time to just stick with the old method of numbering students into groups and letting what happens happen? Perhaps. But there are losses involved when students spend a class period in a state of rambunctiousness with little true learning happening, not to mention the tension in teacher-student relationships and loss of rapport that so often occurs.
When done well, group projects build valuable teamwork skills, inspire students, excite them about what they’re learning, and teach them much more than you lecturing ever could. That’s worth some extra effort.
