Teacher's Role During Teamwork

The PowerTeaching: Mathematics lesson framework presents teachers with unique opportunities to observe the students interacting, explaining their theories, arguing for a particular point of view, helping their peers, and being helped. Only a few minutes of observation during a class period can provide signifi cant insights into a student’s ability and performance level.
 

While using various minute-by-minute assessment techniques and observations, a hierarchy of abilities aligned to Bloom’s taxonomy should be used to help guide your instruction. The following questions should be kept in mind to help gauge the students’ understanding of the materials being presented:

• Do the students know basic defi nitions, formulas, vocabulary, rules, and procedures needed to analyze and solve problems?
• Can the students apply their knowledge to similar problems or questions?
• Are the students able to extend their reasoning and analysis to new situations or problems?
• Can the students create their own problem statements or questions based upon the underlying concepts being studied?
• Can the students explain their reasoning in writing or verbally to their peers?

By asking each of these questions, the teacher can identify the stage of development that the students have reached, and make immediate changes in his or her instruction to help the students understand the concepts better.

While the students are working within their teams, it is important for the teacher to actively monitor the teams and facilitate when necessary. In a true PowerTeaching: Mathematics environment, the teacher should encourage the students to assess one another within their teams. By promoting such behavior, the students become more responsible for their own learning and the learning of their teammates, thus creating team interdependence.
 

There are many benefi ts to observing the students at work in groups with their peers.

• You can observe a student working through a complete problem or assignment versus seeing only the final product (exam or paper).
• You can observe their reasoning techniques, level of basic knowledge, and concept attainment.
• You can identify their dominant learning style by observing whether their presentation in pairs or groups is oral, visual, or kinesthetic. This information can be invaluable if you help tutor the student in or out of class. (As an aside, cooperative learning lends itself to using multiple learning-style presentations throughout each class.)
• Brief, specifi c interventions by the teacher or other students can be created to provide help and/or guidance for students having diffi culties. Try to make these in the form of guiding questions versus statements of fact or direction. This is very effective, but it can lead to frustration on the student’s part until he or she becomes accustomed to a questioning response from the teacher instead of a mini-lecture.
• Informal conversations take place between individuals, groups, and the teacher, which help highlight problem areas the entire class may be having. These discussions also help create a more personal class environment as the students get to know the teacher and the teacher learns about the students. 
• Shy students will participate more with their peers in small groups than in a large class, so they too can be observed. It is helpful to identify students who are shy to encourage their participation in nonthreatening ways.

The benefits of using minute-by-minute assessments and observations as assessment tools helps not only the teacher, but also the students. These alternate forms of assessment: reduce[s] anxiety, raise[s] students’ self-esteem…and emphasize[s] that the students are responsible for their own learning. The results they obtain are based upon their efforts and not the teacher’s.
 

Source: Assessing Students and Yourself: Using the One Minute Paper and Observing Students Working
Cooperatively; Dr. Theodore Panitz and Patricia Panitz, 1999, accessed from ERIC, https://www.eric.ed.gov.