Hacking Group Work

“A book by Connie Hamilton offers something different - it’s like having a friend in the corner of your classroom, giving you a steady stream of smart, practical, instantly doable ideas that will make your teaching better.” -Jennifer Gonzalez, Cult of Pedagogy 

There’s no better way to engage students in active learning than through collaboration. But facilitating group work has its challenges. 

In Hacking Group Work, Hamilton offers concrete tips that will: 

• Facilitate multiple groups at different levels and various pacing rates
• Accommodate lessons to help introverts be more comfortable in social learning tasks
• Foster productive listening and questioning to elevate student talk
• Develop activities that encourage self-awareness
• Set up protocols that support interdependence and student ownership of their learning
• Accurately assess individual student’s content knowledge, group communication and collaboration skills

If that isn’t enough, Hacking Group Work offers over 60 activities and protocols, complete with step-by-step directions that teachers who teach any grade level can use tomorrow with their students. 

Creating functional group activities that are rigorous and meaningful is challenging. Connie Hamilton, once again, shares easy-to-use blueprints for leveling up cooperative learning in your classroom. If you've struggled to get students to work together successfully or buy in or just want to offer more engaging learning opportunities to your learners, then this book is for you. Using the Hack Learning format, the book is extremely practical, and teachers will walk away with tangible activities and tips to ensure learning in this format. I highly recommend this book.

Group work is one of the most frustrating activities to make productive for both students and teachers. For many students, group work means one student doing most of the work while everyone else takes equal credit for it, or in many cases, one student might unintentionally monopolize the group in a desire to make sure a good grade is achieved. Connie Hamilton's Hacking Group Work is the book many teachers have been waiting for. She outlines many of the most common issues teachers confront when planning for group work. How to manage time, how to make roles valuable within the group, how to teach students to genuinely collaborate. There are so many practical steps you can take today in this book to make groups more effective and productive in your classroom. This is another truly helpful resource for teachers from the "Hacking..." line of books.