Welcome to a new series where we feature great books for language learners and teachers. This month we are featuring the book, Successful Group Work: 13 Activities to Teach Teamwork Skills, by Patrice Palmer. Have you assigned group projects only to discover that one or two students did all the work, conflicts arose and students just didn’t work well together? Patrice Palmer has been teaching for more than 20 years in a variety of settings and discovered that just giving students a group project without setting them up for success often produces poor quality assignments. The whole point of teamwork is lost. This is why she wrote the book.
Benefits of Group Work
Group work benefits students in a number of ways:
- increases student talk time
- gives students a chance to interact with each other and negotiate meaning
- provides opportunities for authentic conversation between students
- share resources and strengths while compensating for weaknesses in each other
- develops 21st century skills in learners
The book is a complete course of 13 lessons that you can do with students before you start group work. Or choose the activities that reflect the areas your students need the most work in. Many of the activities are 20-30 minutes long, so you can easily fit them into your class schedule. And most are no-prep or low prep which busy teachers will appreciate. The activities in this book emphasize the benefits of teamwork so that students will want to work together.
Successful Group Work: 13 Activities to Teach Teamwork Skills teaches students:
- why teamwork is important
- how to work well in groups
- how to resolve conflicts
- how to self-reflect on their own work
By motivating students to work in groups and teaching them key team work skills, this book helps you avoid the pitfalls of group work, and helps students get the most out of working together!
Patrice would like to thank Walton Burns of Alphabet Publishing for publishing the first of many of her books.
Each week we scour the internet to find incredible books to highlight on our various social networks (@TESOL, @AmericanTESOL, and @ESLWebinars). Check out our past favorites here.
To learn more about integrating technology to support English language learners, attend our free Friday webinars.