Your students are in pairs. An activity is about to begin. You tell the class, “Okay, choose someone to be the writer and someone to be the speaker.” Bad idea. At this point you probably have a classroom full of partners playing the staring contest. Are you counting on your students in the partnership to have the maturity or take-charge mindset to delegate a role or take a job that is out of their comfort zone?? Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Let’s go back in time and do this right.
Assign Students with Group/ Partner Roles…the Right Way
- Your students are in pairs.
- Look at each other. Pick someone to be the duck and someone to be the goose. Done? Okay good.
- The duck will be the writer and the goose will be the speaker. Annnnd….go!
Why This Works-
- Deciding to be a duck or goose is easy. It’s arbitrary and meaningless.
- Later, when it’s task time- there is no awkward dance. Everyone has been assigned a role.
- This allows some students who would never volunteer themselves for a particular task to get a chance to branch out. It also allows those students who have a tendency to take charge and overshadow their group members to get a smaller role than usual.
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