215: Seventeen Tweaks That Make a Big Difference in Group Work

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast

Jennifer Gonzalez

Education, Teaching, Instruction, Classroommanagement, Educationreform

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cooperative learning can be a powerful learning strategy, but only if it works well. In this episode Connie Hamilton, author of Hacking Group Work, returns to the podcast to share 17 small changes you can try that will make group work more effective in your classroom.

Thanks to EVERFI and Verizon Innovative Learning HQ for sponsoring this episode.

You can read a full transcript of this podcast at cultofpedagogy.com/group-work-17-tweaks/.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 215 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.
0:05.9	In this episode, we are going to give you 17 small tweaks that will dramatically improve
0:11.6	how group work works in your classroom.
0:15.4	Group work was something I was never really great at as a teacher. It was just something I
0:31.7	kind of threw into my plans to mix things up, a way to make my classroom more interactive,
0:37.3	and sometimes a way to save time. Grading one assignment for four students was a lot faster
0:42.8	than grading four separate assignments. I also genuinely believe that students could learn
0:48.0	a lot simply from interacting with their peers on any kind of structured task, even if it wasn't
0:53.2	all that optimized for collaboration, because humans learned things from each other all day
0:58.4	every day. Still, I know I could have done a much better job of it. I know that the participation
1:04.5	in my students' groups was uneven, that the load probably fell too much on some students
1:09.5	more than others, and that there was probably a whole lot of inefficiency, a lot of wasted opportunity.
1:16.3	So it makes me excited to be able to share the work of Connie Hamilton with anyone who is teaching
1:22.2	right now. Connie is joining me on the podcast for the third time today. The last time she was on
1:28.8	in episode 172, she happened to mention this little trick she uses for giving instructions to
1:34.0	groups when they're working, and I thought it was such a smart idea that I told her she should
1:38.6	really write a book on group work. So she did. Her book, Hacking Group Work, 11 ways to build
1:45.5	student engagement, accountability, and cooperation with collaborative teams was published earlier
1:51.0	this year. In it, she offers a ton of practical advice and ideas for making the most of the time you
1:57.6	devote to group work in your classroom. To give us a peek at what's inside the book, Connie has
2:02.9	written a blog post for Cult of Pedagogy where she shares 17 small tweaks you can make to some
2:08.8	of the most common things we do when it comes to planning and managing group activities.
	...

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