Team Building Lesson – Zoom
Overview and Objectives: In a collaborative classroom, team building is an essential component of success. Students need to work together and support one another to truly function as a team while problem solving and learning together throughout the semester. Getting to know one another, building trust, and learning to communicate promote team mentalities and can be accomplished through well-planned team building activities.
Students will ultimately be placed in core teams of four for the semester, but some activities, like the Jigsaw one below, will require them to work with students outside their core group. As such, students need to have a functioning rapport with all their classmates. Zoom is a good initial team building activity for early in the course, allowing students an opportunity to create a story as a whole class.
Materials:
- Approx. 30 unique pictures of random objects, one for each student in the class. Number the pictures 1-30 (or whatever number is in your class). *
- Space for students to sit or stand in a large circle
- Tape or video recorder to record the story
- Random number generator (like the one at Random.org)
*Googling “Random Images” or “Random Objects” is an easy way to get an assortment of pictures. (See examples above and below.) These pictures could loosely follow a theme, if desired. For example, as a math teacher, I might try to choose images somehow math-related, no matter how tangentially. Alternatively, I could encourage or require students to utilize a math term somewhere in their segment of the story. It would not have to be in a math context, just a math term. For example, the student might say “Suddenly, there was a noise. I turned toward the sounds’ origin.”
Timing: 30-45 minutes, depending on the number of students and the size of their “paragraph” contribution to the story.
Process:
- Have students form a large circle in which everyone can see each other. Students may be sitting or standing depending on the space.
- Turn the stack of pictures upside down, fan them out like a deck of cards, and then go around the circle having each student select one card. Students should not look at the cards yet.
- Explain Zoom: “Each of you has just drawn a random picture. Please turn it over and take a quick look at yours. In a moment, we are going to create, collectively as a class, a story that incorporates each of these pictures. One of you will begin a story that incorporates whatever happens to be on your assigned photo. The student to your left then continues the story, incorporating their photo, and so on. Each of you will supply a “paragraph” to the story, which should be approximately 2-5 sentences. Our goal is to have a cohesive story by the time the we have come full circle.”
- Have a pre-activity discussion about team work. Ask students to think on their own or with one or two people beside them about each of the following questions, sharing, recording answers, and prompting deeper thought as needed. (Possible answer/target answers are in parenthesis.
- Why are we doing this? (Components of team work: interdependence, communication, risk-taking, trust)
- What makes you excited about this challenge? What makes you nervous? (Answers will vary)
- What might be important to the success of this activity? (listening, connecting and building off what previous students have said, don’t overthink your possible story line: try to keep the story flowing)
- What other questions are there before we get started? Do we need any additional information or guidelines before we begin story-telling? (Answers will vary)
- Use a random number generator to randomly select the photo number that will start the story, and let the story begin! (The teacher may wish to record the story for prosperity’s sake.)
Teacher Notes: As part of the pre-activity discussion, the teacher may wish to guide the students toward “what to do if someone is stuck?” As this is a team effort, and it is a goal of team work to support each other, you may wish to have students brainstorm how they will jump in to help a struggling classmate. Allowing the students to come up with this policy will give them ownership and create something they will be comfortable implementing, if needed. (Hopefully, it will not be needed, too; the knowledge that help is available should encourage students to be brave and take risks in their contribution.)
Assessment (aka – How did we do?): Immediately following the activity, ask students to discuss how we did as a team. What worked well? How might we improve in a future collaborative effort? As much as possible, connect responses back to the components of team work identified in the pre-activity discussion.
Teachers may consider playing the story for students again at a later time. Reminding students of where the class started, and revisiting the post-activity discussion. Of the areas we identified for improvement, how are we doing now?
Social Media: There are interesting alternatives to this version of Zoom floating around on the internet. For example, this one where instead of random images, pages from a picture book are cut out and given to each student. Without showing each other your image, students must line up in the order that gets the book pages back together.
Cooperative Lesson – Transformations with Jigsaw
Overview:
Students will work in groups using provided resources and each other to become experts on one of the four types of transformations. They will then return to their learner group and teach each other, giving all students in the group an understanding of all types of transformations.
Objectives:
Experiment with transformations in the plane:
- CCSS.Math.Content.HSG.CO.A.4 – Develop definitions of rotations, reflections, and translations in terms of angles, circles, perpendicular lines, parallel lines, and line segments.
- CCSS.Math.Content.HSG.CO.A.5 – Given a geometric figure and a rotation, reflection, or translation, draw the transformed figure using, e.g., graph paper, tracing paper, or geometry software. Specify a sequence of transformations that will carry a given figure onto another.
Materials:
- Guided activites for expert group homework assignment
- Assorted supplies for students to teach with
Timing: 3-4 class days
Process:
- At the end of class the day before you wish to start the lesson, have students gather in their regular, core groups. For this activity, this will be their learner group. Students will decide who is going to become an expert on each of the four types of transformations: reflection, rotation, translation, and dilation. (2-3 min)
- Each type of transformation will have a small amount of background information and research activities associated with it (i.e. looking up definitions in textbook, watching a short video example, etc.). WatchKnowLearn.org is a nice resource for videos that are classified by subject and subtopics, and which have been reviewed and rated by teachers and students. Students will work individually on this piece, making note of any questions they have, so they can discuss those with their fellow experts. This section will be completed as homework. (15-20 min)
- In the next class, students meet with their fellow future-experts based off the topic of transformation they are trying to become an expert in. Students should begin with a brief discussion about the definitions and key features of their transformation. Then taking turns, students should either pose a question they had or comment on a feature of the transformation they found interesting and why. By the end of class, every student within the expert group should have a strong enough grasp to teach the necessary information to their learner groups the next day. (30-40 min)
Assessment: Do an exit ticket as students leave asking – anonymously – if each student feels confident they could teach their transformation after the time spent in their expert group that day. The teacher can use this to 1) gage whether students are ready to return to learner groups the next day, and 2) as a discussion tool for the class to self-assess the team work. If many students said they are not ready/comfortable, the teacher can open a dialogthe next day about what went wrong? How can we improve? Is more time needed?
- Have students return to their expert groups, or small sub-groups of their expert groups, creating teams of no more than 4 students. In these groups, students will plan a mini-lesson and/or interactive activities to use with their learner groups to teach them about their particular transformation.
- Once ready, students will return to their learner (original) groups and take turns sharing their expertise on their transformation with the rest of the group.
Assessment: Students will complete a HW assignment to apply their newfound knowledge. The next day, they will return to their learner groups to compare and contrast answers, resolve issues, clarify questions, etc. Experts can revisit any topic for which it is apparent there were issues. One paper will be collected from each learner group for a homework grade.
Assessment: Transformations will be tested on a future test to check for understanding by individual students.
Teacher notes: Teachers may wish to consider assigning students the transformation they will study rather than allowing groups to decide. While allowing the students to decide encourages ownership and can increase motivation, the difficulty level of transformations can vary widely between, for example, translations and dilations. Teachers could assign topics based off of student strengths within each group.
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I truly enjoyed reading about your first lesson for team building. I think its great that you have chose to let the students build a story, it will let their creativity shine through. In addition having students self access as a team will help them through out their life. I’m curious if exploring that farther by asking students to identify how they most helped the group as an individual may help them when working as a group in the future. Nice job!
Thanks, Natasha! I thought it would be fun and beneficial to have a team building activity that didn’t center around math. Plus, even some of us math nerds like a little drama and story telling now and again. 🙂
And yes, hopefully, the self-assessment will be a skill they develop and can use in the future. That was one of the ideas I am definitely taking from our EDT622 learning on cooperative learning: those sorts of life and work success skills have to be taught. Some of us are fortunate enough to acquire them through our parents, mentors, coaches, or other opportunities, but it shouldn’t be left to that chance. If we can teach it along side our content in schools, we should do it.
Thanks for the feedback!
Angie
These are great! Specifically about your second lesson, I love that you let the STUDENTS choose who (from their learner groups) will become an expert in which of the four areas of transformations. I’m really hoping that a theme of my next year of teaching will be that I gave my students the ability to CHOOSE more. You’ve modeled this style of teaching well. I also appreciate your “heads up” in the teacher notes addressing the range of difficulty of the different transformations. Maybe instead of the teacher assigning stronger students to the more difficult topics, you could somehow label each transformation with a difficulty level, so students can use this information when deciding which of their teammates will go where? Great work!
Thanks for the feedback, Kenzie! To answer your question, I almost suggested exactly that as an option. I think it would be great if students could get to a point where they are comfortable enough with each other and their own math skills to be willing to say, as a Team, who is ready to take on a more challenging topic vs. who could benefit from working more in-depth with an “easier” topic. I do believe teams need to be well-acquainted and comfortable with each other before that can happen, though, so labeling the problems that way may depend on when in the semester this topic is covered.
I also think it depends on how it’s framed and the culture created in the classroom. Wording it carefully as “taking on a challenge” and “thinking deeply about something simple” makes both sound worthwhile, and hopefully avoids a stigma of pointing out who’s “smarter” or “dumber.” And again, if the culture in the classroom is one where students understand that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, are at different points in their learning, but are still capable of contributing to – and a crucial component of – classroom learning, then identifying stronger students is not a problem.
I wasn’t comfortable suggesting that option without listing these caveats to avoid potentially embarrassing students or harming team dynamics, but this seemed like a tangent from the topic of this post, and more information than I could include. So, I ended up leaving that alternative out of the post. I am so glad you brought it up here, though, because I do think it’s a great idea! If you try it out next year, please let me know how it goes!
I really like the Zoom activity that you have created! First of all, it is an easy enough task that any student could participate in. Secondly, the reflective questions you came up with are really intriguing! I’m sure you will learn a lot about your students at the start of the year by reading their answers to these questions. Some students will struggle with sharing out, but that’s ok! Great lessons!
Thanks, Bobby! Those questions were inspired from the goals of cooperative learning and reading a lot of great team building activities suggested by our classmates. I am really curious to see this used in the classroom, reflect on it from a teaching perspective, and tweak as necessary! (Plus, I think the stories could be really hilarious. :))