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After speaking to so many STEM teachers, the most questions I receive are about collaborative group work in stem class. There are so many issues that can come with group work. You’ve experienced this if you’ve been in the STEM classroom. You know the issues, as well. Oftentimes you would see one or two students in each group sitting back and not actively participating in the work.
Sometimes the same students get the chance to build every time. This would cause conflict amongst those who also wanted to build. Other times students would have conflict within groups because of lack of communication. Some students spend more time engaging in off-topic conversations than the task at hand.
Will it be effective, though?
You may want to implement change and expectations for the students, but it’s not easy. You think, “Will this be effective if I’m not the homeroom teacher who is in charge of the classroom environment?’ The answer to that is “YES!” I visited a classroom once a week for about an hour, and these strategies were HIGHLY effective in student engagement.
Use the ideas in this blog post to help you plan, organize, and manage your collaborative groups in stem class.
You CAN have equity in your STEM classes based on the choices you make with collaborative grouping. I hope this product can encourage you to get started. All the hard work you put into incorporating collaborative groups will pay off when you see the students thrive. They will also have a TRUE understanding of what it means to be an engineer.
All of our students can be engineers, mathematicians, and astronomers. You are giving students what they need to achieve!
What is collaborative group work in STEM class?
If you’ve read my blog post on misconceptions and truths about STEM class, then you have a more clear picture of all the work STEM teachers put in every day. You may have heard of ‘group work’ where everyone in the group has their own tasks. In collaborative groups, each individual in a group is a part of a system that needs each person to complete their task.
Engaging students in collaborative groups in stem class increase the classroom culture for active student learning. Students gain independent learning strategies as the year goes on. As these groups are where the majority of the learning happens, the teacher’s role is being shifted to a ‘facilitator of student learning.’ This is very different from the ‘ I Do, We Do, You Do,’ model. It possesses many benefits to students.
Why should we have collaborative group work in stem class?
In this atmosphere, the classroom culture facilitates and nurtures a collaborative and problem-solving mindset. The goal is that before your students get together to build or design something, they have learned and acquired all of the necessary skills and content they would need to apply that knowledge in their collaborative groups.
When this is done, students gain much more than just content knowledge and skills. They identify a little bit better. Students can also build on problem-solving skills, improve critical thinking, gain collaborative skills such as communicating opposing ideologies. They even expand self-directed learning skills.
In my classrooms, I’ve also noticed that building a collaborative culture sets the stage for anti-bias thinking because students are forced to unpack those ideas as they arise.
Characteristics of Collaborative Group Work in STEM Class
A big tall tale sign of this type of learning is the students are at the center of it all. Are the students engaged? In collaborative groups in STEM class, students are asking and answering the questions within their groups. They are working as a high-function task force to complete their task. The groups develop ideas, communicate ideas, analyze the problem, create a plan, and implement the plan hands-on. During this time, students are working on higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills that may be cross-curricular.
Establishing acceptable expectations of Collaborative Group Work
Some issues may arise in collaborative groups in stem class. So working out the kinks beforehand (and as they come) is most beneficial to you as a teacher. Proactively addressing the possibility of student stress in these situations is key. Many students are used to group work, but they aren’t used to collaborative group work in stem class. Many want their voices to be heard, but they find it difficult to listen. For others, they may fear speaking out because of how they think their peers view them. Collaborative groups can be a breeding ground for insecurities and injustices if they are not openly discussed before, during, and after working together.
As a STEM educator, it is also important to note that many collaborative group environments like these and apathetic teacher reactions to conflict within these groups are deterred our Black, Students of Color, Girls, and Special Education Students from engaging in STEM in the classroom and even pursuing it in the future.
Student Job Roles in STEM Group Challenges
In my classroom, I have groups of four students work together throughout an entire unit of study. They go through the entire engineering design process together as a group with the problem addressed in the unit. I choose students randomly to be in their groups. I don’t generally allow students to choose which groups they would like to be because that further perpetuated behavior I did not want to see such as boys only, girls only, or Black students only groups.
Each group of four students also has four job roles. If there is an odd number of students in the classroom, I usually break up the groups into smaller groups. This would mean you have more groups to manage, but students take a bigger initiative in their groups when they realize they are doing a 2 person job.
STEM Challenge Student Job Roles
The roles within the groups are the following:
- Inspector
- Project Manager
- Builder
- Supplier
On building days, all of my students get to experience every single one of the jobs in short rotations. I keep the rotations 5-10 minutes long, depending on how much time you have to build. I teach my students how to turn their attention on my with my respectful attention getter, then I say “switch.”
In the following pages, I have provided you with table group posters that show which job students move onto after each rotation. This makes rotating much easier as students are not arguing about which job they want to do next.
This structure of rotations EACH time the students build provides stability for some students who get anxiety around these days. They know that they will not be forced to do the same job the entire time or that they will be able to do the job they’ve been so excited to do.
You can read more about how I teach STEM Challenges using these jobs in this blog post.
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Project Manager
The project manager has the sketches or ideas for how the group will be building the design. They will be telling the supplier which pieces to get from the material kit/box/bag, they will tell the supplier which materials to give to the builder. The project manager will also be telling the builder how they will be using each of those materials to build according to the plans of the group. They are not allowed to touch any of the materials.
Supplier
The supplier is the only student who is able to tough the materials from the materials kit or box that has all of the materials. They get the directions from the project manager on which piece to get from the kit. They hold on to all of the materials until the project manager tells them to give them a piece of material to the builder. The supplier can only give one piece of material at a time that needs to be built.
Builder
The builder is the only person in the group that is able to construct the design using the materials. They are the only ones that can touch the materials as they are building. The builder gets a communication from the project manager on how to build, and they get their materials one piece at a time from the supplier. They are not allowed to build what they want, they have to follow the directions of the project manager.
Inspector
The inspector is the person in the group that sits with a clipboard and observes how others in their group are completing their jobs. They fill out an inspection report that gets turned in to me at the end of the building session. Since all of the students rotate through the jobs in that one day of building, all of the students will be able to see the inspection report that is being shared within that group. They are mainly looking to see how the communication and listening skills are from their peers.
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What to expect at first…
It will be chaos. I mean this in the nicest way. If you are not at all familiar with STEM or collaborative learning, then you might be taken completely aback by the noise, movement, flexibility in seating, and student-centered learning experience.
There will be….
- Conflict. Address this head-on. See what the environment in the room is like. Usually, as a cart teacher, you don’t have control and power to form the culture of the room, since the homeroom teacher does that. Mold with your student’s learning styles but also strip away any biases, prejudices, and even racist thoughts your students may have when relating to stem class.
- Complaints. Many students want to choose their own groups, but since I don’t allow for that, I may get complaints from certain classes. I explain that in this world, we are forced to work with people we are not familiar with or even like. My goal for them is to remain flexible and humbled to learn from and alongside students who they might not find to be superior to their peers.
- Frustration. If your students have never participated in a stem curriculum, they will be faced with a lot of frustration because in stem there are no clear-cut examples. Students will also be forced to be working in groups, and many traditional teachers don’t find this very optimal because it isn’t easy to manage.
Eventually….your students will grow accustomed to the procedures and fall in love with stem-like they never have before.
I hope this helps you with getting started with the collaborative group in your elementary stem classroom. Make sure you sign up to download the free resource with all of the job tags, posters, and printables you will need to get started.
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Simple Stem Challenges Bundle
If you are looking for simple stem challenges to practice these stem jobs, then check out these stem challenges. They are perfect for getting started. Included in this STEM Mega Bundle is everything you will need to get started and thrive throughout the year!
This FREEBIE is on me!
If you are teaching 4th grade NGSS or upper elementary science, you will need these 30+ writing prompts! They are the perfect way to incorporate science into ELA or writing into science!