Team Work

Recently I attended a virtual education conference and one of the sessions was creative collaborative classrooms. One of the first things we learned was about individual roles in the team. I really like this because it gave each person some responsibility and it had nothing to do with ability. It let each person be an integral part of the team. I like that each team had four people on a team. If there are fewer, people can share the fourth role or someone can double up on a role. Each time the team meets, the roles can be rotated or kept the same.

Here are the four roles:

• Resource Manager
• Task Manager
• Facilitator
• Recorder/Reporter.

The Resource Manager is responsible for gathering, distributing, and returning all resources. This includes handouts and equipment. If the team needs the help of the teacher, this person will contact the teacher.

The Task Manager is responsible for keeping the team on track. If team members are off task or going off on a tangent, the Task Manager reminds them of the team’s purpose. The task manager makes sure that the job gets done and that everyone is included. Informing the team how much time is left until the deadline is important.

The Facilitator gets the team started. This person might restate the directions or read aloud the question. This person makes sure that everybody understands what the team’s objective is. Different parts of the task may be allotted out to different team members.

The Recorder/Reporter is responsible for all written or oral responses of the team. Once the team agrees to the response, the Recorder/Reporter writes down the answer(s). If the team is called about to share the response, this person is the one who shares it to the class.

You can randomly assign the roles or you can specifically assign which student gets each role. It depends on the abilities of your students. If all abilities are equal or unknown, I would assign them randomly. When deciding who gets which role, the team was instructed to go alphabetically by first names and then assign the roles in that order.

How do you handle teams in your classroom? Please share.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash