Classroom Project Teams

Classroom Project Teams

Many teachers working in Learning Circles have reported the effectiveness of having students work in small teams. Once you know how many projects there will be, you can post the project names with a limited number of spaces for students to sign up and be part of the project team. The team for a given project meets and discusses their task. They decide what needs to be done and assign the work. When they have finished, they have a report which lists all of their names as authors. Grouping students into pairs to write together is an effective way to increase the quality of the students' work. This organization makes it very easy to respond to each project sponsored by your Learning Circle partners.

Group Composing

Teachers from previous Learning Circles describe a group composing process that is very effective for reducing mail overload. The teacher or a designated student sits at the computer with a group of students or the whole class. The students and teacher discuss the topic that has been suggested by others on the network. As ideas are proposed they are typed into the computer. The students can see their ideas take shape on the screen while the discussion continues. After the class or group discussion, a smaller number of students can revise these notes into a class or group position paper to send to the Learning Circle. This process results in a single draft with multiple authors.

In some classrooms, teachers prefer to have students write alone or to allow students to choose whether to write cooperatively or independently. In this case, here are some other ways to make the decision of which messages to send.

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