Group Work at University Park Campus School
 Small group work by students is a cornerstone of classroom practice at UPCS. On a typical day, students will engage in group activites in a majority of their classes. Group work is a critical instructional strategy for providing rigorous learning experiences to a wide range of students – many of whom struggled in their previous schooling and some of whom are new to the English language. The emphasis on group work and the school’s culture of collective accountability for student success are mutually reinforcing.
Advantages to Using Group Work:
Increased Engagement with Learning: When teachers use group work, more students are engaged in learning for more time. Everyone is actively participating at all times and students have little opportunity to disengage.
Deeper, More Flexible Understanding: Through discussion with peers, students are forced to communicate and, thereby, clarify their own thinking. They also must listen to others, becoming familiar with multiple ways of thinking about complex problems or ideas. Engaging in multiple understandings requires students to think beyond their initial response and understand the content in a richer, more connected, way.
More Efficient Support for Individuals: When students work in groups, they have access to many supportive teachers — their classmates. Peers can quickly, and effectively, remediate each other’s weaknesses or misunderstandings (and, in teaching each other, solidify their own learning). The teacher, then, is more available to provide intensive instruction to the most struggling students and push the thinking of everyone.
Tool for Formative Assessment: When students are working together, their thinking becomes transparent. No one can hide in a classroom where everyone is expected to participate. The teacher, then, can quickly assess understanding (and misconceptions or gaps in knowledge) and tailor instruction accordingly.
Implementing Group Work at UPCS
On a given day, UPCS students will engage in some form of group work in almost every class. The size, structure, and purpose of group activities vary with each activity. In science, students may be writing a lab report in pairs. In math class, groups of three often complete different levels of assignments at their own pace. And in English, groups of four may each use a different critical thinking activity (such as an “I Am” poem, a comparison/contrast diagram, a drawing of imagery) to respond to the same text.
Explicitly Teach Students to Work in Groups: UPCS students are introduced to group work right away, and teachers model and make clear the expectations for supporting others and being a positive influence in a group. This explicit modeling and feedback eliminates a common scenario where one student does that activity and the others disengage. Strategies for establishing good group behavior:
- Institute a “check” grading system, where students receive a “check” on the spot if they are following the criteria for good group behavior.
- Provide very structured roles to every member of the group.
- Model each role first.
- Conduct a “fishbowl” to model a group discussion. Require students in the outer ring to keep track of the modeled discussion in order to analyze it as a class.
- Provide a task list and clear expectations for the product that day.
- Design activities that no student can do on their own. For example, provide each person with a different chunk of information which may only be shared orally, or require that each person complete a particular piece of work and sign off on it.
- Model and practice effective discussion practices, such as “piggybacking,” where a student must refer to a previous comment before entering the conversation.
Form Groups Carefully, According to the Demands of Each Assignment: The size of group and approach to selecting who will work together varies depending on the assignment. The selection of groups is a nuanced activity and requires deep knowledge by the teacher of each student’s ability level, learning style, and personal relationships. At the middle school level, groups are nearly always pre-selected; in high school students are occasionally allowed to select their own groups. Often English language learners are paired with a “buddy” who speaks the same home language and is more proficient in English. For some assignments, students are grouped heterogeneously to allow more advanced students to support their peers. The “high flyers” work together sometimes, especially in skills-based activities, in which they can move more quickly and complete extension activities. Struggling students may be grouped together to enable the teacher to spend time offering them intensive support.
Set Clear Expectations and Make All Students Accountable: For groups to work well, instructions need to be crystal clear and students must be held accountable individually. Often, this means students will work in a group to solve a problem or discuss a text but complete their written responses individually. Some activities have a distinct role for each individual; the whole group cannot be successful unless each member contributes. Teachers monitor groups to ensure active participation by all students. Students learn to hold each other accountable for contributing to the overall success of the group.
Differentiate Assignments and Support: The best group activities provide support to students who lack skills to access challenging texts or concepts, while at the same time providing all participants with opportunities to explore complex, layered thinking that pushes their understanding within each discipline. Group instruction can be differentiated by giving more advanced students more challenging roles, assigning different activities to different groups, and offering extension activities for faster students who finish the initial assignment.
Find Comfort in the Chaos: Group work is noisy and requires teachers to surrender some level of control in the classroom to create a learning-centered activity. Teachers cannot view themselves as the sole authority figure in the classroom. They have to think of their students as experts and scholars with valid opinions and insights. For many teachers, this is hard, initially. They see group work as threatening because they perceive it as a loss of control. It really isn't. At University Park, the faculty believe it is a sign of a confident thoughtful teacher.
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