Cooperative Learning- Hickman

Lesson 1- Team Building Activity: Connecting Stories

When thinking about a team building activity for a classroom of high school students I focused on the importance of getting to know one another on a more personal level. I think building classroom community with teenagers is really important in order to continue on with lessons and earn their trust and attention as a teacher as well as to earn trust and attention from each other. I’ve always thought the team building activity in the movie Freedom Writers was really powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PahVp7p3XHg

While the Connecting Stories activity may not dig as deep as some other sharing activities, it may still allow students to get to know each other personally and find out ways in which they may have similarities.

Lesson Objective:

• Students will work together in teams of 4
• Students will learn more about one another
• Students will be able to make connections to each other
• Students will work to remember what each student says
• Teams will introduce teammates to the class

Lesson Overview:

The Connecting Stories activity will begin with one student beginning by sharing a short story that is true about him or herself. The students will then go around the group and, one after the other, state another story that relates to the previous student’s story in some way. The stories should flow within three seconds of each other. Students will also be assigned to remembering information about one person in the group in order to report out at the end of the activity and tell the class about that student.

Room Set-Up:

Students in the room should angle their desks to be facing the other members in their group. Students should all be able to see each others face.

Materials Needed:

• Scrap piece of paper
• Writing utensil
• Creativity

Outline:

Intro- I will ask students to turn to the people next to them and create teams of 4. Students should not move around the room to find partners but should stay close to where they are. If students end up needing to move around to make a group I will prompt them to do so. Once teams are formed I will ask each person to get out a scrap sheet of paper and a writing utensil

Activity- Next I will explain the activity. Each team should pick one person to begin. The first student will start by stating a true story story about themselves. This story should only be one sentence long. Ex. Last summer I went to the beach and got stung by a jellyfish. After the first story is shared the next student, clockwise, will state their story which must relate to the first person’s story in some way. Ex. I’ve never seen a jellyfish in real life, only at the aquarium. The students will go around the circle connecting stories to the one before them. Each student should state their story within three seconds of the last one to keep the activity moving along. In addition to stating their story, each student will be encouraged to remember the story of the person that goes after them. They can use the scrap paper to jot down quick pictures or words. This encourages students to actually remember the stories of their classmates in order to articulate them latter. The student should not write down word for word what the other said as the activity should go fast.

Presentation- After students have gone around the circle at least 5 times, or as time allows, I will end the activity. For the second part of the activity, students will introduce the student who went after them and quickly tell the class a few interesting things about that student based on the stories they told. This sharing presentation should only last 5 seconds for each student.

http://www.icebreakers.ws/small-group/connecting-stories.html

https://sharemylesson.com/blog/building-classroom-community-help-students-get-know-each-other

 

Connecting Stories Variation:

When teaching a college freshman, UNV 101 University Studies course, I used a similar type of team building activity. Every student in the class was a male but around half of the students were international students and the other half domestic. Each week I experienced different situations which involved students being unwilling or not interested in learning or working with each other. I eventually spent one of the classes doing a team building experience in hopes that the students in the room would realize that no matter who they were they probably had something in common with each other.

I began the class by asking everyone to move their desks into a circle with everyone facing each other. Next I asked that each one of them write down an interesting fact about themselves without using any identifiers. I didn’t want students to be able to know right away who the person was that wrote the fact, for example something like, I have a tattoo on my arm etc. After students wrote down their fact I collected them all in a bowl and began reading each fact out loud. We all had to guess which student wrote that particular fact. Some students wrote things like, “I love shoes and have a collection of over 100 sneakers”, “I’m getting married this summer in Florida”, “I play tennis for the school and we won our championship yesterday”, “I play the guitar and my band plays in town every weekend” etc.

During the activity I noticed students smiling and laughing and making comments such as, “wow I didn’t know that about you” or “I like that too”. By the end of the activity I think students at least learned something new about their classmates. If I could have gone back to teach the class over I would have done this activity on the first day.

 

Lesson 2- Co-op Co-op

Student-centered Discussion:

In order for students to have more say in what they learn, I will conduct the Co-op Co-op model of cooperative learning. I will begin by introducing the topic “College”. I will briefly talk about the different avenues to achieve higher education such as types of degrees and places to earn an education however I will mostly leave the topic open for students to interpret. I will spend a few minutes asking students in the room what they think college is. We will keep track of our thoughts with marker on a large poster in the front of the room.  

After discussing the topic and writing down ideas, we will work towards narrowing down common themes. Ideas can be grouped together or elaborated on in order to narrow down the list. After discussing the topic, students will form teams.

Team Selection:

Students will be able to select their own teams however, students should consider forming teams with other students who possibly have ideas about college that differ from their own. Teams should be about 5 students big.

Separation and Delegation:

Each group will work among themselves to pick one of the themes written on the board. Each group should have a different topic. Each member of the group will them split the topic into mini topics or parts in which each individual student will research part of the topic themselves, using the internet, books, interviewing the teacher etc, and report back to the group. For example if students write on the board that college includes dorms, a team may choose the topics of dorms and then split this topic into sections for investigation such as cost, size of the room, requirements for different colleges, pros/cons etc.

Team Presentations:

After each student finds out more information about the topic they will work together to create a presentation to discuss the topic with the whole class. Students may also want to create a creative Google Document, Pinterest page or Padlet in order to hold all of their ideas. These links can all be shared with others in the classroom so that every student can explore each topic on their own. With so many resources out there for each topic, having one place with minitiopics can be helpful to narrow down important information.

https://www.pinterest.com/degreeoffer/college-tips/

https://www.pinterest.com/magnifymoney/dorm-ideas/

 

Evaluation:

The evaluation for each group will simply involve me asking the audience what questions they have about the topic and/or if they agreed with what was presented. Since students will have many different ideas and opinions about what college means, there will not necessarily be a right or a wrong answer. I will also evaluate students on how well they worked with each other to accomplish the task.