Grouping

Project Based Learning depends on the group performance.  The process is very difficult for these students because it requires so much creativity, critical thinking, research, and then at the end, they have to pull all of that into some sort of a product.  The group composition is critical to the success of the project.

For every PBL project, the best number of students per group is four.  If you have less people, then some of the jobs get combined and overlooked.  If you have more students, then two of them will be sitting around and not contributing.  However, I inevitably don’t have class rosters that are divisible by four.  In that case, I’ve found that it is better to have smaller groups than bigger groups.  Also, sometimes I get students who come to me and say that they’d rather do it by themselves.  I usually talk to them to see what’s going on, but then I let them do it.  Sometimes it comes out okay, and sometimes they decide they want to be in a group in the future.  At the very heart of it, PBL is about student choice, so that is a choice that I allow them.

The group members should include:  a leader, the Team Manager; a creative person, the Project Developer; an organized person, the Materials Organizer; and a conscientious person, the Recorder.

A bit of a warning about the Recorder – having one student designated as the ‘recorder’ doesn’t mean that the other three don’t write anything.  This is a big misapprehension on the part of my students and they usually discover the problem when they come to the first summit.  Getting students to write in a science class is incredibly difficult, as though they turn that part of their brains off when they walk through the doorway.  However, as anyone who has looked at the steps of the scientific method knows, the last step is communicating results, usually in writing.  Also, I firmly believe that the act of ‘writing’, of organizing your thoughts about a scientific concept into some sort of order while your fingers are moving is a great way to embed your learning in your brain. 

This issue usually shows up in the Daily Learning Logs, where many times a group will tell me that the Recorder wrote the logs for everyone.  We have a little discussion about how the logs should reflect individual learning, not the group learning. 

At the first of the year, before I know the students very well, I picked the groups randomly.  By the end of the year, for the project that comes after testing, I let them pick their own groups, subject to my veto if I foresee a problem.   For the rest of the year, I have a general idea of students’ strengths so I make an effort to put the groups together with a balance between abilities. My classes are leveled, so there isn’t a huge gap in abilities in any one class.  However, if they weren’t leveled, then proper grouping would be an even more critical activity.  The sort of disorganized method I used for creating groups has worked well enough under these circumstances, but I think I can do better and thus serve my students better.

Last year, I probably did PBL about half the time compared to traditional units.  For the upcoming year, I plan to implement more PBL units.  In that case, the groups should be composed with care and an eye towards what each student can contribute to the group.  Instead of waiting until the school year has progressed to see what they are good at, I plan to inventory my classes the first week of school to see where they fall in the categories above.

Creativity can be tested in a variety of ways, as can leadership.  I plan to use things like Survey Monkey and other instruments to discern their interests and abilities.  In addition to helping with grouping, this will help me with differentiation.  In the past, I’ve looked at differentiation as something to do with the Special Ed or ESOL students, and something that applied in a general way to the rest of the population.  It’s all about the learning styles, right?  With the move to learner-centered platforms, each student should have an individual learning plan.  I need to know what they want to do and what they can do if I’m to guide them correctly.

Wow!  The first week of school is already crammed with ‘administrative’ tasks, from my Harry Wong ‘First Days’ things to sorting out iPad procedures when some students had them the year before and some didn’t.  And now I’m talking about taking more time out from the relentless pace of the curriculum to gather data about my students? 

Yes, I am.

As many people have pointed out before, Project Based Learning requires a huge time investment on the front end of each unit.  I’ve come to the conclusion that this time outlay includes the beginning of the year.  If I put in the effort during the first few weeks of school to assemble information about my students, I anticipate that the rest of the year will be more productive and less stressful, both for them and for me.