76. Building Teams in Your Math Class from Day 1

Johanna Kuiper 0:00

Last episode, we talked about the five pillars of an effective math classroom, with the final pillar being teamwork. Now using teams in your classroom sounds great in theory, but how do you actually get the ball rolling. In today’s episode, I’m going to share how I set up my teams for success starting the first day of the school year. Let’s get started.

Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast. I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive, no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers. And that’s why I’m here, bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset. And that’s what you can count on.

Hello, hello. Welcome to a brand new episode. Before we dive into the topic of today’s episode, I wanted to share about the challenge that I’m running starting August 13. It’s about building effective teams for your classroom. And I’m going to be sharing three strategies on how to do that. So if you would like to participate in this free event, go to misskuiper.com/challenge. That’s m i s s k u i p e r.com/challenge. I’ll also have a link in the description as well as the show notes on my website.

Alright, let’s dive into the topic of today’s episode, building teams from day one. So first thing I want you to do is I want you to think about the typical classroom that you might walk into the desks are in rows, they’re facing the front of the room and facing the teacher. Now, this is a great classroom for direct instruction, and where students aren’t really going to be interacting at all. But if you want students to work together, you need to set your classroom up. So that way they are going to default work together, because when you’re in rows you’re facing forward to your default is going to be talking to the teacher asking for help that way. But if you’re doing a team, so you have desks facing each other, their default is going to be talking to one another. And that’s going to be the foundation of how teams work effectively in your classroom.

So what I do is I use groups of three, so my desks are set up in trios. Now, groups of three is there’s a lot of research on why to use three and not to and not four, I will say if you are a kindergarten, first grade, or second grade teacher, you want to use pairs, because they’re still learning to be human. They’re learning how to communicate and collaborate. So working in a group of three is going to be overwhelming, whereas working in a pair is suitable for that age range. Once you hit third grade, that’s where we start using groups of three. And that’s the ideal group size starting from third grade all the way through college and beyond. So pairs for a second and under grade three, use groups of three.

And then the reason I don’t use groups of four, and I’ve found that groups of four don’t work for other people is because in a group of four, it typically devolves into a group of three and then one person outside of that. And one, we don’t want that one person to be lonely, because the idea is more minds are better than one, especially when they’re of the same age. So working alone is not the best. And so when a group devolves into three and one, you might as well have just used three to begin with. So that is why I don’t use four as well as the fact that it becomes more social than it is about the academic work. But in groups of three, there’s enough accountability, but there’s also enough invisibility, that it works out well. But in a group of four, it usually devolves into social time. And usually one person is left out inside of that group.

So thinking about my classroom, I told you that it’s set up in trios. So the way that works is I have desks, so I have two facing each other and then one facing the pair. So it works out well, because then all students are kind of looking at each other a little bit better than if I had it set up any differently. But it still allows for no one to have their back to the screen, which I use as the main centerpiece for instructions. So students know what they’re doing. So I want to make sure that they have that visible, so two facing each other and one facing the pair. Now I know I said I do not like groups of four, but this past year I had a class have started out at 35 and dwindled down to 30. And so I needed groups of four because I just did not have space for 12 groups of three. So I did have three quad groups last year to make up for that one class. But for any class that didn’t need that extra desk, I just put three within that group next time

After having your group size figured out and your classrooms set up with your desks, now we need to talk about random groups. And I’ve been doing random groups for, I don’t even know how many years now 343 and a half, something like that. And I love it so much, I can’t even tell you how much I do not miss seating charts at all. So I set the expectation from day one that I use random groups. So every day students come into the classroom, they’re gonna be sitting in potentially a different group than they were sitting in yesterday. And I do the random groups for the whole period. So students come in there, random groups are on the screen. And then they are in that group, the whole class period. I know some teachers prefer to have a seating chart and only randomize for activities. I do not prefer that. And it’s not my suggested method. But you need to do what works best for you. But if the thing that’s stopping you from randomizing your groups is students who have IEPs, or need preferential seating, or combinations of students, that cannot happen, you definitely need to come to my free training that’s happening August 13. Because I am going to be showing you how I use this website that will allow you to prevent certain combinations, and accommodate for students who have professional preferential seating, or other needs for specific seats in the classroom. So definitely join us for that, if that’s what’s stopping you from using random groups. I also wanted to mention why I like random groups, yes, it means I don’t have a seating chart. And I’ll have to change it 10 times to accommodate students who choose not to want to sit next to each other. But it also allows for my classroom to build community faster and build that know like and trust with each other. Because they’re going to be sitting with different people every single day, or potentially different people every single day. And so when you’re doing math adjacent warmups together, you’re doing team building activities, you’re doing math problems together, you’re getting to know more people, which means you’re likely to feel more comfortable in that class, which leads to confidence, lower math, anxiety, and overall, just feeling like a sense of belonging inside a classroom. And for my middle schoolers, that’s huge. So doing random groups has a lot of benefits for students as well as me, who doesn’t have to worry about a seating chart. The next thing we need to talk about is actually how do we form these groups.

Now that we have our group size, our classroom setup, we’re using random groups. And that is going to be doing specific activities at the beginning of the school year that’s going to foster that know, like and trust factor between students. So on the first day of school, the one I like to do is called A to Z get to know me, and it’s an activity that I made for my students, many years ago, and I just love using it. So the way it works is each group gets a piece of paper, and there are prompts from A to Z. And students are going to be spelling their name by answering questions. So for example, my name is Johanna. So I’d answer the J question first. And the J question is, just so you know, my least favorite snack is blank. And my favorite snack is blank. So I would answer that question and tell my team. So I’d say just so you know, my least favorite snack is granola bars. But my favorite snack is chips and dip, whether that salsa, guacamole, hummus, chips, and dip is my favorite snack. And then the next person would go, then the next person would go, and then I would answer the O question and go around and answer the H question and so on till I finished my name. And if a kid has repeat letters in their name like I do, so it’s J O H A N N A, I don’t have to answer the N and the a question twice. I would kind of just stop after J O H A N. And that would be my final turn. And the questions ranged from like serious to really out there. I think one of them is, if a herd of kangaroos was coming at you, what would you do? I think that’s the key question, actually, kangaroos, blah, blah, blah. So there’s lots of funky questions, but as well as serious ones about like things about the upcoming school year, what their hopes and dreams are. So there’s a wide variety of questions in the activity.

Another team activity that I do is on day two called 100 numbers to get students talking. And you might know this one because it’s pretty big in the math world. But if you don’t, that’s okay. I’m happy to introduce you to you. So this activity is actually by Sara Vander worth. I think that’s how you pronounce her name. But she created it, where it’s 100 numbers scrambled on a page and you have students working in groups of three or four because she made versions for each of them. And it’s important that if you have a group of three If they have a very specific three activity, and if you have a group of four, they have a very specific activity for that. And when you do it, it’ll make sense. But it’s important to make sure groups of three have one groups of four have others, if you have a pair, I suggest doing the group of four activity. So here’s how it works. So each group is going to need one highlighter per student, and three copies of the activity, and you’ll only hand out one at a time. And what I like to do is everyone has it facedown on their desk, I set a timer and as soon as it starts, they can flip it over and begin working. So Student A is going to mark off one, student v is going to mark off too soon, and three is going to mark off three. And it just keeps going around in that circle until the timer is done. And I like to do a timer the first round, because trying to get to 100, the first round will take literally forever. So just set a timer, I do, I think three minutes, the first round to see how far students can get. Sarah has an entire blog post on this with all of the information. So if I’m going too fast, or it’s not making sense, the link is in the description as well as the show notes on my website. Plus, in Episode 67, I go into very big depth on all the activities I do the first week of school, which include a lot of team building activities. So definitely check out that episode for more information. After the first round, after those three minutes are up, I like students to talk about like what they noticed what they saw maybe a better strategy that they can use next time. And then we do the second round. And it’s basically a repeat of that, then the third round is a little bit different, because this time, you’re gonna give them an infinite amount of time, till like the first couple of groups get to 100. At least that’s how I do it. And by now students may be noticing a pattern, which is why it’s important to make sure groups have the specific paper for the number of kids inside of their group. But you’re not telling them the pattern, they’re figuring out the pattern. And that’s where the get talking piece or the getting students to talk piece comes into play. It’s a really fun and powerful activity. And it takes for me most of the class period, if not all of the class period. So it’s a great beginner beginning of the school activity to fill an entire class period.

And then day three, I add some more team building activities, not like those typical icebreakers which I hate, like the bingo card, I don’t know why that just gives me so much anxiety. So I never do that with my students. But I have fun activities that I incorporate not only just the first week of school, but sporadically throughout the weeks to come. Because it’s not just a foundation, but it’s something that needs to be worked on consistently throughout the school year. So definitely check out episode 67  to get my full first week of school activities that I do.

Alright, to recap, we have talked about group size being groups of three for third grade and up. Whereas pairs work better for a second and under. Then we set up our classroom or I set up my classroom in groups of three. And then I use random groups from the very first day of school. And then I also start doing team building activities, whether that’s getting to know one another, or getting students to talk and work together. I start those the first week of school as well. And this really just builds the foundation of effective teams in my classroom. All of those four things together, is really important to jumpstart students collaborating and communicating. Because as we move through school year and get to actual math content, I want students to be able to communicate and collaborate effectively. So we need to start with fun things and simple things and low risk things. So students are more willing to do those academic and more challenging things together. So, as always, if you have questions about today’s episode, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram @misskuiper. I’m happy to answer any and all questions. And with that, I’ll calc-u-later.

Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to misskuipersclassroom.com and click on podcast

Transcribed by https://otter.ai