Working together

last updated:September 2010

How can you help pupils to work together during group work?

Research evidence

There is strong research evidence that collaborative learning can effectively promote pupil understanding, increase motivation to learn and enhance competence and self-esteem.  But you can’t just put pupils into groups and expect them to work together productively.  When pupils are sitting in a group, but there is no specific requirement for them to work together, they are likely to work individually.  So you need to give them a reason to work together.  

Your evidence

You might find it helpful to explore what types of tasks encourage your pupils to engage in when working in groups. You could tape record or video different group work activities in which pupils have been asked to work together, for example to:

• solve a problem
• play a game
• read a story
• role-play, or
• reach an agreement.

Make a note of how your pupils do or don’t work together to in each of these circumstances.; Try to identify whether there are any pupils that find it difficult to work together, or if pupils respond differently to different activities.

Next steps

Now that you have observed how your pupils work together on different tasks could you identify any key features of the tasks that are effective at encouraging them to work collaboratively?  Would it be useful to work with your pupils or a colleague to develop some activities that would help them to work together?  Which activities do they find easier to complete independently, and which do they find easier to complete as part of a group?