Creating community in the classroom: Part 2 (cooperative planning)

This series of lessons is designed to help develop a sense of classroom community through use of group goal-setting, decision-making, brainstorming, peer feedback, positive reinforcement, and positive peer pressure. The lessons will help students create and maintain a supportive environment for learning. Part 1 focused on goal-setting process and practice. In Part 2, students will apply knowledge of the goal-setting process by cooperatively creating a plan to work on group goals.

A lesson plan for grades K–8 Guidance

By Pat Nystrom

Learn more

Related pages

• Creating community in the classroom: Part 4 (rewarding improvement): The fourth lesson in a series on improving classroom learning climate, this lesson provides an opportunity to evaluate student progress and to provide positive reinforcement for improvements in behavior. Using a one to ten continuum, students will subjectively evaluate class progress on the ten adjectives listed as class climate goals. After this process, students will publicly recognize those classmates who have helped the class improve or who have personally improved.
• Creating community in the classroom: Part 1 (setting goals ): This series of lessons is designed to help develop a sense of classroom community. Group goal-setting, brainstorming, peer feedback, group decision-making, positive reinforcement, and positive peer pressure are used to create a safe, supportive environment for learning in the classroom.
  
  In Part 1, students are introduced to the goal-setting process. They will practice the first step of the process as they set individual and class behavioral goals.
• Creating community in the classroom: Part 3 (monitoring progress): This series of lessons is designed to help develop a sense of classroom community through use of group goal-setting, decision-making, brainstorming, peer feedback, positive reinforcement, and positive peer pressure. The lessons will help students create and maintain a supportive environment for learning. Part 1 focused on goal-setting process and practice. In Part 2, students applied knowledge of the goal-setting process and cooperatively created a plan to work on short-term group goals. In part 3, students will monitor the effects of their plan by determining whether short term goals are being achieved.

Related topics

• Learn more about character education, community, cooperative learning, goal-setting, guidance, and life skills.

Help

Please read our disclaimer for lesson plans.

Legal

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• review the importance of goal-setting and the steps in the goal setting process.
• practice goal setting skills by looking at options to meet goals.
• review long range goals and develop a short term plan for working toward the goals.
• practice cooperative behavior while reviewing concepts, setting goals, and formulating short term plans.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

45 Minutes

Materials/resources

• Each student will receive a printed report that lists the ten adjectives chosen by the class during the goal-setting activity of the previous week.
• Each student will be provided with one sticky note
• Each student will need a pen or pencil

Pre-activities

This lesson is second in a sequence, designed to follow the lesson called Creating Community in the Classroom: Part 1 (Setting Goals.) Written results of the group goal-setting activity done the previous week will be provided for all students in the class.

Activities

1. A brief summary of the previous lesson (Creating Community in the Classroom: Part 1) will be followed by a cooperative learning game. The game is designed to review concepts presented during Part 1 and to assess the students’ grasp of goal setting benefits and process steps.
   • The class will be divided into six more or less equal teams.
   • Each team will receive a lists of questions and a handout that covers the benefits and steps of the goal setting process.
   • Teams will be given seven minutes to coach each other for the challenge round where one member of each team will try to earn points by answering the questions correctly in a quiz bowl.
   • After seven to ten minutes, handouts are collected and teams are split up into quiz bowl groups, one member of each team per group. One at a time, students in each quiz bowl will draw a question from an envelope and try to answer correctly. (To create questions for the envelope, make another copy of the question handout and cut the questions apart.)
   • If the question is answered correctly, the student keeps the question paper. Other students in the quiz bowl judge correctness, but the counselor rules in case of conflict. Unanswered or incorrectly answered questions are returned to the envelope. The envelope is passed to the right and questions are answered one at a time until time runs out.
   • The quiz bowl part of the activity is seven minutes from the time the first envelope is opened. When time is called, the envelope is returned to the counselor and students return to their teams with the slips of paper they earned with correct answers. The team with the most slips of paper wins the competition and a round of applause. (Everyone wins because they have been very motivated to review and learn the concepts on goal-setting.)
2. Process the activity with questions like:
   • What did you notice about your team?
   • What did you notice about other teams?
   • What adjectives describe your team?
3. Compliment students on positive behaviors you saw during the activity.
4. Ask if the game just played had any effect on the trust level of the class. Explain the concept of group trust level and use a 1 to 10 continuum, with ten as the highest level of trust, to assess the current trust level in the class. (”One” would be a class where the trust is so low that classmates wouldn’t open a window to give you air if you were dying of suffocation. “Ten” would be a class where classmates would jump in front of a speeding bullet to save your life. Explain that the numbers are just personal opinions, that they have to clump together trusted people and untrusted ones to get an average, that you hope there are no ones and suspect there are no tens. Explain that most newly formed classes or groups have a low trust level because people do not know each other very well.)
5. Have each student say aloud the number between one and ten that describes their opinion of the class trust level. After all students say a number, write the range of numbers and an estimate of the average of the numbers on the board for all to see. Write down these numbers for use in future sessions.
6. Ask: Remember the ten adjectives you chose last week when you were asked what you wanted this class to be like? After answers, hand out the printed list of ten adjectives chosen during the part 1 lesson and ask:
   
   What would our trust level be if the class was like this wish list?
   Ask students to paste or clip this list after class in a place where they will see it every day.
7. Say something like “So far, we know that the people in this class would like for the class to be (read the ten adjectives.) We think our trust level is about a ____. We know that goal setting can help improve self-confidence. The class knows where it wants to go in the long run (same ten adjectives.) Anybody got a plan on how to get there?
8. If a good idea comes up, think on your feet and develop (with student input) an action plan. If no practical ideas emerge, offer the following suggestion. Hand each student a Post It note and ask them to list the specific behaviors that would have to change if the class met their long range goals. Take up notes yourself and use student helpers to write the ideas written on the Post It notes on the board. No names allowed. As the same behaviors are listed more than once, tally how many times a behavior is listed. Circle the behaviors that were listed most often. Discuss the list as needed.
9. Ask: Now that you know what behaviors the class wants to eliminate, do you have any ideas about how to improve? If none emerge, suggest that they agree to target one or two behaviors and have everyone improve in those areas. Students can raise their hands to vote on targeted behaviors. Then, to increase commitment to improvement, ask “Who will promise to improve on that behavior in the next week?” If they agree to this idea, write in your records all negative behaviors listed and flag the behaviors students promised to improve for future reference.
10. Ask the class to look back at the ten adjectives on their wish list and say how they would rate themselves on behavior during today’s lesson. Praise everything you noticed.
11. Wish the class luck and say you can’t wait to see how much they improve in a week.

Assessment

• Number of students volunteering to improve behavior in the next week.
• Positive reinforcement from peers
• Teacher and administrator observations
• Number of mediations for class members
• Number of discipline referrals for class members.
• Changes in perceived trust level

Supplemental information

Comments

Counselors who are trained in and comfortable with solution-focused brief therapy can adapt these lessons by incorporating solution focused strategies. For example:

• When you compare this class to the wish list of ten adjectives, how do you rate on a scale of one to ten?
• How will we know when the class has improved?
• What if there were a miracle and tonight everyone in the class changed to be like this adjective list, how would the class be different tomorrow?
• If the class is a three now and wants to be an eight, how much of an increase could we try for this week?
• I’m really amazed at this improvement. How in the world did you do it?