Teamwork is an important concept not only in the classroom, but also in the work world. When students start looking for jobs, even at the very beginning of their careers as a high school kid looking for some extra cash, bosses are going to be looking for them to be able to work as a team. One of the benefits of extra curricular activities are that they build the skills that it takes to effectively communicate and work as a team.But not everybody is athletic and not everyone has the opportunity to participate in extra curricular activities. So how does a teacher encourage teamwork in the classwork?
First teamwork does come with some challenges:
1. First we want the students ideas to still be individual ideas and when working with others those ideas can get mashed with others, or one student will control all the ideas and some students can be thrown under the bus
2. Also some students might have to do all the work on the project. The teacher must regulate who does the work and how much work each individual has to do
3, There must be enough work for a team to do, the work can be harder but it has to be something the team can accomplish
In project based learning teamwork plays a huge role. In the project students have to work in a whole class team, small group teams, and also have to do their own work in order to bring to the team and enhance the learning. It is important that as a teacher you have to manage the teams so that each team remains productive and the work and learning is enhanced by the teamwork and not inhibited by it. One way to do this is for the teacher to ask questions to check in on the groups. The teacher should do verbal check ins often while monitoring group work. Also they should provide deadlines for teams to turn in work to show the progress that they are making.
Adam I think you made a great point when you said that extra-curricular actives helps build teamwork skills. I agree, most of these actives are sports related. With all the cuts to extracurricular activities, the children that want to participate don’t necessarily have it available to them and like you said not all are sports enthusiast. Children build good communication skills and teamwork when they participate in sports ;-) In the classroom, group projects are similar. Your score goes down when not all members are doing their part. It is up to us as teachers to monitor the interactions and progress of students to help them all succeed in building these skills.
ReplyDeleteHi Adam!
ReplyDeleteI really liked how to you made the connection to team work being a benefit of school but ultimately, one of any job. In PBL, so much of what we do centers on a purpose beyond the simple one inside of limited classroom. It helps students to allocate responsibilities, deal with their own responsibility, as well as deal with the irresponsibility of others. All of these are very useful for the future, not only because they will help them with these instances in their work place, but also because it will help students discover for themselves, how they will handle it and grow as a person.
Nice job!
-Sabrina