A New Take on Collaborative Roles and Discussion Groups for UJH

In October of 2018, I was fortunate enough to attend the Illinois Council of Instructional Coaching in Naperville, Illinois. Throughout the day, I was able to go to several different breakout sessions including one session on the 4 C’s in which the session leader took us through various activities on critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.

It is always a challenge in our classrooms to engage all students in class discussion rather than just the same four or five students who always respond. Many times, our more introverted students like to sit back in the shadows and let their peers participate. Too often as teachers, we can get lost in our instruction or activities and have not taken the time to ensure that the entire class is engaged. I was looking for more strategies to encourage students to actively engage in classroom discussions in a way where they felt confident in doing so. 

In one activity, the presenter focused specifically on collaboration and communication highlighting her belief that many times we ask students to collaborate with their classmates without them having a clear understanding of what that really looks like. Perhaps, this is a skill that needs to be explicitly taught. Moreover, many times we encourage our students to collaborate when in reality what they are doing is group work. There is a difference between the two. In group work, different parts of a whole project are divided up for learners to work on. The dissection of the project allows for each group member to really work independently on their assigned portion of the project.

In contrast, collaboration focuses on taking each member of a collaborative group and assigning them a role that is necessary for the group to reach the same end together, rather than simply breaking a project down into its collective parts. Through collaboration, the success of the assigned role determines the success of the group.

Again, another skill that needs to be modeled is active listening. Too often in our society (at any age…just watch political commentary on TV), instead of listening to what ideas your group members are purposing, individuals within the group are already thinking about their next comment, question, or rebuttal without taking in and processing what has already been said. Eager for confrontation, we must teach our students to summarize in their own mind what is being said and provide a system for how to listen to the ideas of others, process them, then react in an appropriate manner.

The collaborative roles work as follows:

•          Skeptic: Can only ask questions
•          Expert: Only Person with a device. If a question comes up that needs to be researched this is the job of the expert
•          Observer/Recorder: Observes and takes notes on the interactions of the groups. This is the person that will report out to the entire group.
•          Ring Leader: Keeps everyone on task. If this person believes the discussion is headed down the wrong path, or it is off topic
•          Planners: Are the ones leading the discussion, planning the activity, and driving the exploration of the group.

In the example that was used with me at the conference, our group was asked to develop a new sport using these above define roles. I was a planner. It was my task to begin planning for this sport. When we were released to begin discussing, I was like a deer in the headlights! I didn’t know where to begin or what to do. Fight or flight was starting to take over as people stared at me. I was ready to run out of the room when all of the sudden, the skeptic began to ask me questions. She asked me a series of questions that allowed me to begin to engage with everyone in the group and our new sport began to come alive. The observer/ reported recorded what we had developed and was preparing to present I to the larger group. The expert began to look into the technical requirements for developing such a sport. At this point, I knew this was something that a couple of my colleagues might like to try. I was excited to try to use the modeling coaching move to get them on board.

I presented this strategy to two different teachers within my building, as well as demonstrating the process to the students during a modeling coaching move. As I went through each role and practice exercise, I began to discuss with the students what was challenging about each group role? They explained that it was difficult to not be able to express their ideas to the planner or the skeptic, but to stay in their assigned role. As we discussed further they came into the understanding that this was by design, and the priority in this task was to listen. At the end of each 5-minute collaborative discussion, each student was directed by the ringleader to voice their ideas, challenge anything they felt is wrong, or add to anything that might have been missed. Opening up the group to a full discussion after the initial planning phase gave students to still freely express their ideas without thwarting their creativity.

One teacher, Mr. Young, has grabbed on to this strategy and uses it almost weekly in his science courses. He will bring up subjects of inquiry on Nearpod for his class and sets the group free in their roles to construct their thoughts. After several minutes of probing questions, planning, and a lot of listening, the question is opened up to the full group and they determine together what their response will be. At this point of submission, the teacher has the ability to pull out the best responses and dig deeper into each group’s thoughts, asking further questions of the class through whole class discussion. For him, this process has been successful.

One of our social studies teachers, Ms. Wynne, has developed her units around a series of incredibly well thought out discussion questions. She was looking for a way to get students to not only listen to the ideas of their colleagues but also to add variety to how they discuss the central questions of each unit. This strategy of having these discussion roles (skeptic, planner, observer, etc) worked well in her class as long as we worked hard to retain her students to their assigned roles. Together we also scoured the internet and developed a list of several other strategies that we plan on trying next semester to make her discussions more engaging, livelier, and more fruitful. 

Thank you both for giving this a try. I know you'll modify it to meet your needs. Thank you for working with me during this cycle!