How I Understand This Chapter:
Liljedahl’s focus in this chapter is on how students are asked to work collaboratively in the classroom. Most teachers, if not all of them, have their students work collaboratively in some way, for some intended purpose. That purpose is usually either educational (there is a research backed approach to why this will help students learn better) or social (the grouping will promote some sort of social goal, such as diversity, inclusion, or allowing students to work with friends as a positive reward). When students are allowed to self-select groups, they usually select for social reasons. Anyone who has allowed students to select their own groups knows this in an undeniable fact.
The problem with all of the usual collaboration strategies, Liljedahl argues, is that students perceive these groupings as role-defining. For example, if you create heterogeneous groups of 4, students will assume that the highest achieving member of the group is meant to be the leader, and everyone else is meant to follow. They have a preconceived notion of what the group roles are, and students will fit into those roles, whether intended or not. This leads to more following, and less thinking.
Because of this mindset, Liljedahl advocates for visibly random groups being chosen every single class period. with the most effective group size being three students. The importance of the groups being chosen in a visibly random way was extremely important, otherwise the students would just believe they weren’t really random, and fall back into their preconceived group roles. The benefits of random groups of three are that they increase student’s willingness to work with anyone in the class, break down some of the social barriers that exist, increase knowledge mobility, decrease the reliance students have on their teachers, and reduce stress that normal grouping procedures can cause (anyone who has ever not been picked for a group knows how this can go!).
Impactful Quotes (To Me):
“In essence, no matter how strategic a teacher is in their groupings, when there is a mismatch between their goals and the students’ individual goals, it means some students will be unhappy and will disengage. This disengagement is antithetical to a thinking classroom.” (page 41)
I have spent many hours playing seating chart whack-a-mole trying to create the perfect configuration of students that will somehow make the classroom perfect. It doesn’t exist. Knowing that no matter how hard you try, your intended goal(s) will always be antagonistic to what some of your students want is actually freeing. If you let go of the idea of a perfect grouping system, then you can embrace a completely random one much easier.
“Irrespective of the grouping method being used. the vast majority of students do not enter their groups thinking they are going to make a significant, if any, contribution to their group. They are entering the groups in the role of follower, expecting not to think.” (page 42)
No matter how hard you try, when students believe the groups have been made for a specific reason, they will assume they are intended to fulfill the lowest possible role in the group.
“I’m shy. In social studies the teachers always makes us pick our own groups. I hate that. I hate that feeling of asking if I can join a group and then being told no. I just want to work by myself in that class. But I don’t want to work by myself. It’s just so hard.” (Quote from a student interview on page 49)
If visibly random groups only prevented the stress and bad feelings of being rejected from self-selecting groups on a daily basis, then it is a winning strategy in my book. Even when you try to set norms and front-load students with the idea of never leaving someone out, this still happens. When groupings are random and everyone is automatically assigned a group, this stress and anxiety is removed.
How Did This Go For Me?
Any time my students were working at the Thinking Stations in my room they were grouped randomly in a visible way. My chosen strategy was to use the random team picker on the Picker Wheel web site. It was very easy to set up all of my classes and switch between periods, as well as set how many groups and the number of students per group. At the beginning of the period I could easily remove students from the list who were absent that day, spin the wheel on the overhead projector, and use the Team # as the Thinking Station # that students would go to. After the first few times doing this, students knew instantly what to do, and did it.
The intention is that random groups are chosen for every class period, every single day. This proved very challenging for me from a logistical perspective when it came to taking attendance and simply learning students names at the beginning of the school year. The more years I teach, the harder it is for me to learn and memorize my students’ names ( I have over 3,00o former students, and the names and faced get mixed up!). I tried doing random groups every day at the beginning of the year, and I found that I was taking way too long to take attendance, since I just didn’t know everyone’s name yet. So, I compromised on this practice by creating a static seating chart for each class period. When students entered the room, they sat down in their assigned seat so that I could take attendance and they could record the day’s agenda in the student planner. After that was finished, I would project the team picker wheel on the overhead projector so all students could see the groups being chosen, and then they would get up and move to their Thinking Stations.
This worked well, as it created a routine the students could rely on, and still implemented the visibly random grouping strategy when it came time for students to do the thinking in the room. Also, since I didn’t have students at the Thinking Stations every single day, it gave students a “home base” to go back to when we had a review day, or different kind of lesson or activity to do. Once I had everyone’s name memorized I was able to make the static seating chart visibly random as well, and changed it every couple of weeks.
Two things that really stood out to me using this practice was the decrease in stress I saw when it came time for working at the Thinking Stations, and the willingness students had to work with anyone in the room (eventually). The students knew the groups were random, and that they would always be assigned somewhere, so they would need to worry about being left out. This was to be expected. What I wasn’t prepared for was how groups worked when there were students selected who did not get along, or who were all struggling with the content.
One of my favorite interactions happened about halfway through the year when two students who “hated” one another were chosen to be in a group together. When the result came up on the projector they both realized what had happened and yelled “I can’t work with that person. They hate me!” Instead of spinning the wheel again, I went with it and had all of the groups head to their stations. The two students trudged over to Station #1 and I checked in with them. I told them “I understand that this might be challenging, but the nice thing is it’s only for 30 minutes, you most likely won’t have to work together again for a long time, and I bet this task is challenging enough that you will want to work together to figure it out.” I hovered near their group to eaves drop while they worked, and after about 5 minutes of light to medium bickering they were actually working on the task and making solid progress. By the end of class they had tackled the challenge. Did this magically make them best friends? No. Did they learn to set aside some feelings and work towards a common goal? Maybe?
In life you will need to work with all sorts of people, some of which you get along with, and some you don’t. I think this practice of visibly random grouping has the added benefit of forcing students to leave their social silo (which is exponentially skinnier and taller with the prevalence of social media) and interact with students they normally never would.
Sometimes you get a group of three in which all three students are very mathematically fragile. In a traditional group setting, these are the students who almost automatically resort to “mimic and copy” mode. When this type of group occurred, I found it best to be as far away from them as possible, forcing them to figure it out on their own and not rely on constantly asking me questions since I was close by. A majority of the time the students would rise to the challenge, or at least make the effort to do their best thinking, rather than quitting the task and just copying another group’s whiteboard. Did that always happen? Nope! But every time that it did happen was considered a win, since in a regular “teacher assigned” group setting they almost 100% of the time become followers and do no thinking at all.
I think the best result of visibly random groups is that you are constantly sending the message to your students that they are ALL expected to do difficult thinking every single day in your classroom, and that nobody can hide.
Up next: Where Students Work
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