Teamwork Principles
Summary
Materials
- Day 5 PowerPoint deck
- Materials for Teamwork Activity - see Spaghetti Tower Challenge for specifics
Instructional Activities and Classroom Assessments
- Computational Thinking Recap (10 mins)
- Teamwork Activity (20 mins)
- Teamwork Debrief (15 mins)
Learning Objectives
- CRD-1.C Demonstrate effective interpersonal skills during collaboration.
Essential Knowledge
- CRD-1.C.1 Effective collaboration teams practice interpersonal skills, including but not limited to:
- Communication
- Consensus building
- Conflict resolution
- Negotiation
Details
1. Computational Thinking Recap (10 minutes)
- Solicit volunteers to share their homework with the class - stories, drawings, poem analysis.
- Optionally you can choose to share homework anonymously (or you can have students share their homework in a digital form where their peers can read/see them).
- Remind students of class ground-rules and respect for all (trusted environment for sharing).
- As students share their homework, see if others can guess where they see the qualities of Computational Thinking in the story/drawing/poem:
- Decomposition
- Pattern recognition
- Abstraction
- Algorithmic thinking
2. Teamwork Activity (20 minutes)
- Use the Spaghetti Tower Challenge directions to set up the activity.
- Divide the class up into groups of 3-5 students.
- You can use the Group Generator program to randomly sort students.
- Instruct students that they have 18 minutes to build the tallest tower possible that will support a marshmallow with the supplies provided.
3. Teamwork Debrief (15 minutes)
Lead a discussion about how that group activity went. (5 minutes) Use the following questions to guide the discussion:
- Who was able to complete the challenge? How?
- What were some of the problems you encountered?
- Did you find one or two people doing most of the work?
- Were lots of people talking all at once?
- Were there differences of opinion? How did these get resolved?
- Did everyone feel like they knew how to contribute value?
- Did everyone feel valued and respected?
- If you were to structure this activity again, how would you do it differently?
As a class, come up with a list of Teamwork Principles that you will use to guide all group activities going forward. In their groups, give students five minutes to create principles that cover the following concepts (5 minutes):
- Expectations:
- What do you expect from your fellow team members?
- How do you want them to behave and contribute to the work?
- How prepared should they be and what should they do if they are struggling with concepts necessary to complete the project?
- What type of attitude do you feel will foster the most productive working environment?
- Participation:
- Roles - should we assign different roles to team members?
- How engaged do we need to be with the project?
- How do we handle distractions?
- Communication:
- How will we listen to our peers?
- Are there any bad ideas?
- How will we handle situations when more than one person has an idea and wants to share?
- How should interruptions be handled when someone is talking?
- How will you talk to one another?
- Decision making:
- How will you arrive at decisions?
- What if everyone does not agree with the group decision?
- How will you resolve conflict?
- Expectations:
When the groups are finished, ask them to share out three items on their list. (5 minutes) Each group should offer new principles. Write their ideas on the whiteboard, or somewhere visible for students to see. When everyone has shared, ask the following:
- Do you agree with the principles listed?
- Do any items needs to be added?
- Are there any redundancies?
- Do any principles need revising for stronger language?
Once the list has been finalized by the class, document this on a poster that you can hang somewhere in the classroom.