Getting Groups Together

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Day 2 of Learning with Marcy Wood

By: Jessica Breur

On February 19th, teachers, administrators, and math coaches from across the state gathered together at MDE to learn for a second day with Marcy Wood. The day was spent thinking deeply about shifting the culture in our classrooms so that groups could function equitably. Marcy depicted this shift in culture using the following graphic.

My favorite part of the day was working through task structures that reinforced classroom norms. Norms are the rules of engagement, or how we interact during a lesson. Marcy suggested that we choose 2 – 3 classroom norms and always come back to these. If you are struggling to think of norms for groupwork, here are some ideas. Norm #1 …YET, really resonated with me. This norm helps shift the classroom culture to the possibility of each group “getting there”. Norms, like any other rule or expectation, need to be explicitly taught and when groups start to fall apart, teachers need to go back to the norms and reinforce the specific norm again.

Some of the tasks we participated in were Broken Circles, Master Designer, and Rainbow Logic. Each of these tasks are part of the book Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. Each task focused on a specific norm so that students had the opportunity to know what each norm looked like in action, sounded like, and felt like. Some of the other norms we experienced through tasks were:

      • ask questions when you don’t understand
      • everyone is responsible for everyone’s learning
      • explain by telling how
      • everybody helps

In order for these norms to work, it doesn’t work to just have them and practice them. We also need students to fulfill specific roles so that interactions are structured, students take on responsibility, and it promotes autonomy and interdependence among group members. If teachers have students take on roles, then the teacher can truly focus on facilitating the groupwork and not managing behaviors, resources, or giving directions. Some key aspects of determining and creating roles are:

With the set up of shifting the culture of our classroom so it was primed and ready for groupwork, Marcy set us up perfectly for her next visit to Minnesota which is at the Ross Taylor Symposium in Duluth, MN on April 23, 2020. At the Ross Taylor Symposium, Marcy will round out our 3 sessions together by focusing on task structures for better engagement and answering the question about how a task ties to state standards. If you want to know more about getting registered for the symposium, check out the mctm website. In addition, if you are in need of funding for the symposium be sure to check out the available grant from the MCTM Foundation.