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Teambuilding: Getting Students Ready to Work Together.

Teambuilding activities increase the ability of students to work together. The process of developing teams involves building relationships so that members of the team feel connected to one another. Just because we put students into groups does not mean that they will work well as a team. Many students have had bad experiences working in teams, and therefore we should not be surprised when students are skeptical when asked to work with others.  

Educators, however, are being asked to have their students work in teams as teamwork is considered a crucial skill for the 21st century. This means that we, as educators, must take the time necessary to prepare students for team work by giving them opportunities to experience cooperative interactions that can set the stage for more challenging tasks.

No matter the subject or type of class, all students within the class need to become known and to know everyone else. Students need to be given many opportunities to present themselves as the teacher introduces various strategies. As you will learn later, curricula subjects can be integrated into the teambuilding activities. During this teambuilding phase, teachers give the students multiple and fun opportunities to learn cooperative group skills. It is also helpful to have class meetings at the beginning for on-going opportunities for informal discussions as they move to new topics, reflecting on team skills, and group work problems.

At the same time that a teacher begins to help students become familiar with class discussions, he or she also begins to have people meet in pairs, triads, and groups of four, as an additional way to promote inclusion and to begin working together on academic topics.

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A team is a group of individuals who work interdependently towards the achievement of a goal or the completion of a task.  In other words, members of a team come together, agree on a goal and agree that the only way to achieve the goal is to work together (Johnson & Johnson 1995)





Cooperative Teams can be differentiated from other types of groups by certain characteristics:

Positive Interdependence    
When students are placed in groups and refuse to get involved or are off task teachers say, “My students (or this student) doesn’t want to work in teams.” If we then don’t create any more opportunities for these students to work together, then all students are denied the potential benefits of such interactions. What teachers need to realize is that good teams are characterized by mutual goals and a positive interdependence that results in members working together to share resources, support and assist each other, and celebrate joint success. Being positively interdependent doesn’t occur by chance- teachers need to develop it in their classrooms. Team building that allows students to get to know each other and to share ideas are building blocks to positive interdependence.

Individual Accountability       
Teachers often notice that students don’t take responsibility for the work of the team. As well, teachers do not  realize that teamwork can strengthen the learning of each individual in the team. On a productive work team, each member is individually accountable for his or her share of the work, and all members’ contributions are assessed regularly. So helping students to be accountable begins by helping them to understand that indeed working with others can give them skills and knowledge that can not be acquired in a more traditional classroom that is dominated by teacher talk. Giving team members specific responsibilities perhaps by calling on individual students to present the ideas of the team, builds a sense of team responsibility. Having students write a report using ideas develop through team discussions demonstrates in a very practical way the value of the team in expanding the individual student’s knowledge and perspectives on a topic.

Group Processing           
What is happening when students don’t get better working together…teachers are reluctant to continue doing what doesn’t seem to be working.  Teachers want the teamwork used in the classroom to lead to improved performance of the students in teams. Effective work teams must allow adequate time for reflecting on their accomplishments, for assessing areas where they can improve and for looking at how effective the working relationships are among team members. So teachers need to ask students, “What have you done well that has allowed your team to work well" and also to consider, “What can you do better next time to improve your performance." This type of reflection is the cornerstone of life long learning.

Small Group and Interpersonal Skills       
Teachers lament that students lack the social competence to work effectively in teams. Work teams function effectively only if members have and use interpersonal and small group skills, including leadership, decision making, trust building, communication, and conflict management skills. These skills are made transparent to team members and the critical attributes of these skills are discussed.

Face to Face Interaction
 Students who have sat in rows for years are often resistant to working with others. They have found it to be very comfortable letting the teacher talk while they just listen. This type of student likes it even better when a few students answer questions and they are left alone. Extraordinary accomplishments can result when team members interact with each other on a regular basis and become personally involved with the task and with each other. This can be done when students are face to face at a respectful distance from one another…involvement that can be developed using simple cooperative activities that are non-threatening. 

So when you use some of the team building activities we  describe in the following sessions you will be helping your students appreciate the benefits of cooperative team work.


Why Use Team Building Activities?
Since teamwork involves students interacting with one another, it is possible to set the stage for more complex tasks by having them experience cooperative interaction in activities that, by their nature, are fun and engaging.  Students experience a number of specific benefits when they have a chance to work with others

•    Improved communication - For team building to be effective everyone must be involved. By developing teamwork students will learn to encourage one another by talking and by listening to each other in order to solve a challenge.

•    Learn different roles - By working together in groups, natural leaders and followers will emerge. Students put into new activities and into new positions will establish new roles and be able to experience new things.

•    Improve risk taking - When students have the support of a group around them they are more willing to take greater risks and to try new things. In short like the saying goes: the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Students will often develop more self-confidence when they have the comfort of others behind them.

•    Develop a more positive class environment - When students have to work together to solve a common goal it can reinforce current friendships and develop a new respect for others. Teamwork can have a long lasting positive influence throughout your classroom in many different areas.

In addition, we can see from research on learning that an interactive experiential approach results in effective learning. For example:

Cognitive Science Research Studies indicate that people learn more effectively and apply their newly learned knowledge and skills more effectively through games and activities. Research on such diverse areas as stress, anxiety, creativity, and self-esteem reinforce the generalization that we need to play more in order to improve our learning.

Multiple Intelligences. Studies on the nature of intelligence conducted by Howard Gardner at Harvard University have expanded our normal definitions of intelligence to include 8 intelligences. One of those intelligences focuses specifically on Interpersonal Intelligence and it is acknowledged that that the other 7 as well, could be strengthened with a strong effective use of cooperative team learning.

Emotional Learning.  Learning activities that incorporate an emotional response result in long-lasting learning. Boredom is not conducive to effective learning. Activities that include appropriate levels of cooperation within teams and competition across teams, add emotional elements to learning.
Practice and Feedback.  Learners, at any age, cannot master skills without repeated practice and feedback. Team building activities provide opportunities for practicing interpersonal skills and for receiving immediate feedback from peers.

Constructivism adds even a more significant dimension and promise for students. The process is based on decades of literature about learning and teaching by such eminent scholars as John Dewey, John Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Howard Gardner and Lev Vygotsky; to name but a few. In the 18th century Neapolitan philosopher, GambattistaVico, asserted that humans only understand what they themselves have "constructed.” Today the concept has come to be known as constructivism, and is gaining ever-increasing validity from recent evidence in studies of how the brain learns. The approach engages students in social dialog to define questions for inquiry and problem solving, to challenge hypotheses, test/defend solutions, design projects and evaluate their cooperative team results. Such dialogue helps students to transfer academic concepts into meaningful real-world possibilities.

The benefits of cooperation, indeed, are positive factors that not only contribute to well-being and success for students but also school systems, families, workplaces and society. We doubt that the many problems of youth-alienation, violence, drug abuse, gangs, dropouts, suicide, delinquency and despair-will ever lessen unless school, family community systems model cooperation and caring.

If you are trying to convince your school board, administrators, parents or other teaches that cooperative learning groups are effective, we urge you to lead discussions on the benefits for children and youth. Present and involve them in discussions on the important benefits that evolve from this sound way of teaching and learning.
The proven benefits are:

• Greater productivity and academic achievement
• Constructive thinking skills: planning, inferring, analyzing, gathering data and strategizing
• Social competency: trust in others, perspective taking, sense of personal identity, interdependence, sense of direction and purpose
• Motivation: high expectations of success and achievement; high commitment and persistence
• Social support: constructive management of stress; high quality relationships that extend life and are helpful to people
• Psychological health: the ability to develop, maintain and improve one's relationships and situation in life; success in achieving goals
• Self-esteem: improvement due to positive peer relations and achievement
• Positive interpersonal relationships: supportive friendships; appreciation of peers' skills and contributions
• Intergroup relationships: caring concern; acceptance of multicultural diversity commitments to the common good.

Sources:
In Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice (2d ed., 1995), Robert Slavin describes the cooperative-learning techniques that he favors, analyzes the research evidence that supports their use, and provides detailed directions on how to use them.

Cooperative learning is sufficiently flexible that it can be used at all level of education. Four books that describe how to use cooperative methods for specific grade levels are Cooperative Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom (1991), by Harvey Foyle, Lawrence Lyman, and Sandra Thies; Cooperative Learning in the Elementary Classroom (1993), by Lawrence Lyman, Harvey Foyle, and Tara Azwell; Cooperative Learning in Middle-Level Schools (1991), by Jerry Rottier and Beverly Ogan; and Secondary Schools and Cooperative Learning (1995), edited by Jon Pederson and Annette Digby.