Addressing Teacher Concerns
As you began to implement PowerTeaching: Mathematics, you may have experienced a few problems. The
most common are addressed below:
Students in one or more teams do not get along.
This problem often occurs in the fi rst week or two of cooperative-learning implementation. Keep in mind that a team is made up of the most unlikely combination possible. Students differ from one another in academic performance, ethnicity, and gender.
The primary solution for this problem is time. Some students will be unhappy about their team assignments initially, but as soon as they understand that they will be working together for an extended period of time, and especially when they get their fi rst team recognition and realize that they need to cooperate to be successful, they will learn to get along. It is imperative to never allow students to change teams; it is the knowledge that they will work together for many weeks that will make teammates willing to work cooperatively.
However, some students may still require frequent reminders that their task is to cooperate with their teammates. During Team Practice, you must set a fi rm tone that cooperation with teammates is appropriate behavior. No one should be forced to work with a team; in the rare case that a student refuses, he or she should be allowed to work alone until ready to join the team. Nor should a team be forced to suffer with a teammate who is consistently inappropriate; that student should be removed from the team until appropriate behavior becomes evident. The isolated student should still be expected to complete the class assignment independently. It should be clear to the students that using put-downs, teasing, and/or refusing to help teammates are unacceptable types of behavior and will not help teams to be successful.
One effective way to get the students to cooperate better is to provide extra rewards to successful teams. Sometimes the students will not care how their team or teammates are doing until they know that Super Teams get refreshments, extra free time, no-homework nights, a free test-answer pass, and so on.
It is also a good idea for the students who work in pairs within their teams to switch partners once in a while. This reemphasizes that team effort is important, not just individual preparation. Once in a while, the teams you have formed just don’t seem to work effectively, even with time and your efforts to build cohesiveness. If this happens, you may decide to change teams after about four weeks instead of the more usual six to eight weeks. When you reassign teams, take into account the problems you encountered in your fi rst set of teams, so you avoid making the same mistakes again.
Students are misbehaving.
One way to encourage students to behave appropriately is to give bonus points each day based on the team’s behavior, cooperativeness, and effort. Make sure that you also circulate among teams to tell them what they are doing right (for example, “I see the Cougars working well together,” “The Fantastic Four are all in their seats and explaining well to one another,” “The Chiefs are listening well to one another as they share their math strategies”). The points teams earn for their behavior should defi nitely not be a surprise, but should reflect what you have been saying to the class
