Productive Group Work : How to Engage Students, Build Teamwork, and Promote Understanding

The benefits of collaborative learning are well documented-and yet, almost every teacher knows how group work can go wrong: restless students, unequal workloads, lack of accountability, and too little learning for all the effort involved. In this book, educators Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove show how to make all group work productive group work: with all students engaged in the academic content and with one another, building valuable social skills, consolidating and extending their knowledge, and increasing their readiness for independent learning.

The authors also address the most frequently asked questions about group work, including the best ways to form groups and accommodate mixed readiness levels. Throughout, they build a case that productive group work is both an essential part of a gradual release of responsibility instructional model and a necessary part of good teaching practice.