My

Action Plan

Scenario: A high school freshman algebra I class, in which students are resistant to group work.
• Formerly an inclusion class—many students on IEPs
• ELLs and FELs
• Introducing problem based learning

Goal: To increase students’ collaboration with one another in a meaningful way that
encourages students to become an active member in the learning community.

Method:
• Build a community that supports problem solving and collaboration
o Create a safe, caring, consistent, fair, flexible learning community
o Both teachers and students are active members—each person has something
valuable to teach and something important to learn
• Introduce multiple abilities treatment to eliminate status issues
o Teacher describes the different abilities and level of abilities necessary to
complete the task and that no person has all of these abilities so students must
work together to effectively complete the task
o Each student is competent in this classroom
• Teacher acknowledges and eliminates status issues within groups by emphasizing
multiple abilities
• Teacher must provide opportunities for reflection and sharing of experiences within the
collaborative learning communities
• Assign specific tasks and steps for students to complete
• Teacher gets to know the students so that the teacher can strategically pair students

Possible Problems and Solutions:
Problem: Student resistance to group work
Solution: Teach students how to effectively work in groups and show them the benefit of doing
so.

Problem: Copying
Solution: Eliminate status issues, no one person is in charge, everyone has something valuable
to contribute.

Problem: Students distract one another and move off task
Solution: Intentionally grouped students