Group Work That Works

Promote cooperative learning more effectively by transforming your classroom into a learning community. Experienced K–12 educators Paul J. Vermette and Cynthia L. Kline offer their Dual Objective Model as a tool for improving your students’ academic achievement and problem-solving skills, while encouraging their social and emotional development. You’ll discover how to: assign meaningful tasks that require students to rely on one another; build efficient teams, purposefully monitor group dynamics, and assess group projects effectively; engage students in schoolwork while developing crucial career and life skills; motivate students to see the importance of personal and group responsibility; maximize the benefits of student diversity in your classroom. Emphasizing teamwork, persistence, communication, self-regulation, and empathy in a complex, diverse, and technological setting, these strategies can be easily incorporated into any curriculum. The book is filled with vignettes and sample exercises to help you apply the ideas to your own classroom. Each chapter includes a list of "Big Ideas," which invites you to consider how these strategies can evolve over time.

In this book, Sue Cowley offers teachers a practical and easy to read guide to the subject of group work. She explains a variety of strategies that teachers can use immediately in their classrooms, to help all their students work more effectively in groups. Sue offers advice on using group work for the right reasons and on helping students take on different roles within groups. She examines the rights and responsibilities required for great group work, offers routines and structures for helping group work run smoothly, and shows you how to give your students the richest possible learning experience. This book will help you gain a fresh insight into a key teaching technique. You will learn how to use groups more effectively and, through doing so, enhance learning for all your students. This mini guide is written in Sue's much-loved honest and straight talking style. No theory, no jargon, just down to earth techniques that really work. Whatever the age of students or the subject you teach, your classroom practice will benefit from the strategies and techniques that she reveals here. Read Sue's concise guide now and find out how to get all your students learning well in groups.

Collaboration drives progress in every area of life and industry. From business to politics, collaboration is an in-demand skill that today's students need--so why does the modern education system focus almost exclusively on individual tasks and assessments that leave students unprepared for the collaborative world? Maybe it's because of how difficult group work has been to plan, manage, and assess. In The Collaborative Classroom, Trevor Muir brings to light the dynamic possibilities that occur when students learn to work together. Muir shares how to teach students to do it effectively so that teachers can actually love group work. He shares the tools, techniques, processes, and inspiration developed from his own classroom and from the insights and experience gained from master educators and industry leaders. This book is for you if you want to . . . Effectively manage collaborative work time Design the optimal groups Help students give and receive constructive criticism Facilitate student-led collaborative class discussions Empower all students, introverts and extroverts from any grade and any subject area, to purposefully and meaningfully collaborate "The Collaborative Classroom is a practical guide for teaching all students--whether in a K-12, college, or beauty school---to combine their gifts and successfully collaborate." --Winn Claybaugh, founder and dean of Paul Mitchell Schools "Trevor skillfully provides the blueprint for intentional teaching of collaboration skills by sharing a repertoire of strategies, resources, and tools that are eminently practical and yield a higher level of problem solving. . . . This is a must-read for any teacher or administrator." --Kim Austin, principal of Kate Waller Barrett Elementary School "Trevor Muir has crafted a practical guide that helps teachers tackle one of the biggest challenges they face: how to cultivate meaningful collaboration. As a master storyteller, he shares powerful examples of what happens when teachers take collaboration to the next level with their students." --John Spencer, professor and coauthor of Launch and Empower

A book that supports the human spirit and the humanistic visions of those who champion personal and social change through the social work group.... The Second Edition of Group Work: A Humanistic and Skills Building Approach identifies the humanistic values and democratic norms that guide the group practitioner's interventions. The book presents seven stage themes of group development, 29 techniques for group work practice, and more than 60 new illustrations from contemporary group work. The Second Edition remains centered on the role of the social group work practitioner, who employs group work methods to further the personal growth and empowerment of members in community and institutional contexts. Features of the Second Edition: · Offers 29 new descriptions of group work practice techniques, which have applicability in clinical, support, and organizational groups · Provides seven stage themes of group development, describing member reactions and highlighting worker pitfalls, self-awareness issues, and skills for maximizing member growth within each stage · Presents 60 new illustrations of group meetings, which demonstrate the practitioner role and conclude with discussion and analysis · Includes an updated Chapter 10, which highlights ethical values in mental health, substance abuse treatment, and health care groups Intended Audience This is an ideal core text for advance undergraduate and graduate courses such as Group Work, Foundation Practice, Skills of Counseling, and Group Dynamics in the fields of social work, psychology, and counseling.

As teachers today work in ever more challenging contexts, groupwork remains a particularly effective pedagogical strategy. Based on years of research and teaching experience, the new edition of this popular book features significant updates on the successful use of cooperative learning to build equitable classrooms. Designing Groupwork, Third Edition incorporates current research findings with new material on what makes for a groupworthy task, and shows how groupwork contributes to growth and development in the language of instruction. Responding to new curriculum standards and assessments across all grade levels and subject areas, this edition shows teachers how to organize their classroom so that all students participate actively. This valuable and sensible resource is essential reading for educators at both the elementary and secondary levels, for teachers in training, and for anyone working in the field of education.

‘Tom Bennett is the voice of the modern teacher.’ - Stephen Drew, Senior Vice-Principal, Passmores Academy, UK, featured on Channel 4’s Educating Essex Do the findings from educational science ever really improve the day-to-day practice of classroom teachers? Education is awash with theories about how pupils best learn and teachers best teach, most often propped up with the inevitable research that ‘proves’ the case in point. But what can teachers do to find the proof within the pudding, and how can this actually help them on wet Wednesday afternoon?. Drawing from a wide range of recent and popular education theories and strategies, Tom Bennett highlights how much of what we think we know in schools hasn’t been ‘proven’ in any meaningful sense at all. He inspires teachers to decide for themselves what good and bad education really is, empowering them as professionals and raising their confidence in the classroom and the staffroom alike. Readers are encouraged to question and reflect on issues such as: the most common ideas in modern education and where these ideas were born the crisis in research right now how research is commissioned and used by the people who make policy in the UK and beyond the provenance of education research: who instigates it, who writes it, and how to spot when a claim is based on evidence and when it isn’t the different way that data can be analysed what happens to the research conclusions once they escape the laboratory. Controversial, erudite and yet unremittingly entertaining, Tom includes practical suggestions for the classroom throughout. This book will be an ally to every teacher who’s been handed an instruction on a platter and been told, ‘the research proves it.’

This highly successful book on groupwork practice, first published in 1979, has become a standard introductory text on most social work training courses. It is very popular with social workers, whatever their agency setting, and is also used by health visitors, youth workers and the voluntary sector. This new enlarged and revised third edition includes two new additional chapters. The first of these addresses the issue of groupwork in day and residential centres where special kinds of group skills are required in addition to those already well established for fieldwork groups. The second new chapter attempts to understand the significance of race and gender in groupwork and to begin to develop a framework for anti-discriminatory practice. All key sections from previous editions have been retained and updated, while those on group composition, open groups, co-working and consultation have been extended and revised to give more comprehensive coverage. The bibliography has also been developed to include the most recent additions to the groupwork literature, including many articles from the journal Groupwork for which Allan Brown is co-editor.

"Introduces the reader on how to work together in certain situations"--