Strong Team Maps For Agile Student Teams
Forming Agile Student Teams
As an educator, you already know how powerful group work can be for promoting deeper learning, enhancing creative problem-solving, and improving communication skills. However, creating student groups that are truly effective is not always an easy task. In a previous article, we described the five attributes of an Agile student team: (1) small, (2) shared ownership, (3) cognitively diverse, (4) multi-strengthed, and (5) stable. This article introduces a resource for forming multi-strengthed student teams, which means each member contributes a different strength to their team.
Benefits of Multi-Strengthed Teams
By investing in forming mult-strengthed teams, you are:
Encouraging Collaboration: Students can learn from each other and collaborate effectively when they work in teams based on their strengths. Students seek the help of another more freely when they know other members are strong in areas they are not.
Building Confidence: When students work in teams that utilize their strengths, they feel more confident about their contributions to the team.
Promoting Deeper Learning: Working with other students with different strengths can help students learn new ways of thinking and problem-solving.
Enhancing Creativity: Diverse teams can bring a range of perspectives and ideas to a project, leading to more creative solutions.
Improve Communication: Students can improve their communication skills by working in teams that require them to clearly articulate their thoughts and ideas to others who may think differently.
Creating Inclusivity: Teams based on strengths can help create a more inclusive learning environment where all students feel valued and supported.
Freeing Up Teacher Time: Students who work in teams support each other and hold one another accountable. In addition, the teacher shifts to more team feedback and coaching versus individual feedback and coaching. Since there are fewer teams than individuals, all this amounts to more time for the teacher to do more of what matters most.
Strong Team Maps
If you are looking for a resource to help you form multi-strengthened teams that can solve complex challenges, you will be happy to learn about the Strong Team Map. The Strong Team Map is part of our "Tools For Making Groupwork Work" series, which provides educators with practical resources to enhance the effectiveness of group work.Using the Strong Team Map is a simple four-step process.
Your Next Moves
If you are interested in taking your group work to the next level, consider downloading the Strong Team Map.
After forming Agile student teams, , you can put those strengths to work by using other tools in the Making Groupwork Work Series, such as creating a team Learning Alliance and completing My World Map interviews for each team so they can become an effective, positive, and resilient team.
You can also join a workshop to become a Certified Agile Classrooms Teacher. Learn how to develop great Agile student teams using the Agile mindset, tools, and routines. With the right support, you can make groupwork work in your classroom!
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