The importance of teaching teamwork

I love groupwork. I think there are so many benefits to having students participate in groupwork not the least of which the skill will come in handy in the workplace.

However, I am student teaching a multi-session lesson in middle school and not everyone know how to work as a team. One would think that by middle school, they would have had experience and some training in teamwork. I was wrong. I should not be surprised. I don't remember being taught how to work effectively together with a group of classmates as a team. I was just told to work as a team.

Now that my lesson depend on effective teamwork, I learn that I need to make sure I teach teamwork before assigning teams. Confusion about roles, how to get along, how to interact, etc. affect a couple of teams and I ended up troubleshooting when I should be facilitating. I can see how setting expectations and groupwork training can make a difference. The next question is a good team building/how to work as a team curriculum unit. Who has done this effectively?

Middle School - Test of Wills

Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Corinne Kaufman, a math teacher at Seth Low Intermediate School in Brooklyn, has spent 17 years working with middle school students, learning how to turn insults into teaching moments and head off fights.

My current dyad placement is at Maplewood K-8 Co-op, Edmonds in the 7th and 8th grade LA and art class. It is a unique school in that parents are very involved in thier child's academic success and the middle school sector at Maplewood is more like a close knit community of about 110 students total. They have abundant resources and financial support from the parents. Though I am learning a lot here, I can't help but feel like my experience here will be somewhat limited. For instance this particular situation in the picture above-I can never see happening at Maplewood.

[Read the whole story : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/education/17middle.html]

The kids are pretty wholesome and "obedient". For the most part, I don't think the teachers that I work with at Maplewood ever had to experience this kind of interaction with their students. I don't know how I would react in a situation like this. Anyone else with a drastically different experience want to share?

Here's the link to The Critical Years series done by NY Times below. Lots of interesting perspectives, articles and media! http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/education/series/thecriticalyears/index.html

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Helpful Websites

http://www.middleweb.com/1stDResources.html#anchor1767225
www.stenhouse.com/pdfs/0355ch01.pdf