In my September 14th post about “Grouping Students Based on Personality” I shared that I would have my students take the 16personalities.com test and then group students based on the following four categories:

Analysts (intuitive/thinking)
Diplomats (intuitive/feeling)
Sentinels (observant/judging)
Explorers (observant/prospecting)

I first met with Stacie, Sarah and Kristy to discuss how best to break down the groups. We all agreed having students from all four categories would be the ultimate, but in the event that I only had 2-3 students in one or more the categories, we agreed having at least three categories represented in each team group would be best. We also discussed sizes of groups and agreed groups of 4-5 (6 if necessary based on class numbers) would be be best.

Next, I labeled each of the students according to the four categories and then I focused on grouping the students (I have one all-girls class and two coed classes).

I also reviewed student surveys for how reading groups worked in our first unit. What I found was that students were all at different points in their reading within reading teams, thus for our SpiderWeb discussions I had to match students that were in the same section of the book. Some student feedback included a desire to stay in their same on-line discussion groups when we have SpiderWebs. Thus, I have decided to keep groups together on-line and for in-class discussions and have told the groups that they will need to determine reading deadlines themselves so that everyone is on the same page.

Instead of reading quizzes and questions, students are tasked with showing authentic engagement on the discussion boards and through SpiderWeb discussions. Michael Schooler had a great idea to continue to promote autonomy and the buy in has been tremendous. I allowed groups to tell me their reading deadlines as well as three times I accessed them individually on the discussion boards.

So, now my next question becomes how does this new teaming approach work? Will students hold one another accountable and have a better overall experience then they did in the previous unit?

The current unit centers around reading a refuge memoir, How Dare the Sun Rise, by Sandra Uwiringiyimana. Students are reading in teams and will complete a group research project about immigration and/or the refuge crisis. I have not given any formal directions, only told students they need to help one another understand and grapple with the text before deciding on something they want to research more about and educate the class on. I want my students to grapple with texts and ideas and ambiguity forces them to do that. No longer am I the expert with all the answers. No longer am I the one in charge of what a project looks like. Rather, students are in charge of everything and I am just a “mere” facilitator and adviser.

We are now two weeks into the students reading as a team – in on-line discussions and in-class SpiderWeb discussion. Thus far, keeping teams grouped together has provided more engaging than my previous unit.We had our first SpiderWeb discussions this week and I was smiling to myself as students were bringing up ideas/insights/questions/debates from their on-line discussion boards.

I will re-evaluate once we complete our unit and have the students take another survey.

On an overall note, taking a self-paced approach and connecting a new teaming strategy in my three sections of Writing Seminar has challenged me as a teacher. However, I know that my classes are now student-centered and that is extremely liberating for me after 10-plus years of traditional curriculum and teacher-centered learning That is so exciting and refreshing – even if it forces me to be a “student” also and come up with new, creative approaches on the fly while becoming a different type of task master with regards to assessment and individual student progress.