Assigning Work in Small Groups: A Teaching Strategy

How can you get everyone in your small groups to work equally?

All members of small groups should share responsibility!

In the post, First Steps for Creating Classroom Groups, I shared ways that you can introduce small groups in your classroom. But once you have students in small groups, how do you ensure that every student is doing their share of the work?

Using Job Responsibilities

One way to get everyone involved in completing a small group task is to have assigned responsibilities. Similar to the concept shared in the "One Minute Manager," it's a good idea to have something specific for each member of the team. If this isn't done, you can frequently end up with the industrious students getting burned out from doing all of the work, the lazy students doing nothing, and everyone receiving equal credit - Not Fair!

Assigning Responsibilities

Within your 4-5 member small groups, have a system in place that gives each student a job description:

• recorder - responsible for drafting notes of what has been done, completes any written documentation for the group
• moderator - responsible for leading the group and taking charge of the discussing and outlining the task
• facilitator - ensures that each person contributes to the completion of the task, and supports the efforts
• reporter - responsible for sharing out the results of the small group's work
• timekeeper - keeps everyone on the established timeline, and refocuses the group if it gets off-task

Keeping Students on Track

A great way to remind students about their specific task within the group is to have a task card folded like a tent for each student in the group. Each student would have the task card in front of them like a name card would be shown. This task card would have the job on one side, so that each member of the team knows who is doing what. On the flip side of the card there is  a description of the job, so that each student can have the job reminder facing them. 

  Queen Bee