Managing Groups

When facilitating collaborative learning, a teacher ought to…

1. start with small tasks that take only a few minutes.
2. create multiple opportunities for group discussions.
3. model academic discussions by joining and participating in group discussions.
4. evaluate group productivity regularly.
5. set realistic time limits and use benchmarks to support effective pacing.
6. allow groups to become cohesive; give them time to learn how to work together.
7. provide linguistic frames (i.e., sentence starters and templates) to support academic discussions.
8. mix it up (try new groups, new assessments, new configurations, new challenges).
9. increase the challenge by expecting richer, deeper conversations.
10. assign more responsibility to individual groups.