Good morning!
Today we would like to share with you a very fun group dynamic. A friend of us told us about this technique that she was doing with her students in a high school in the UK. We really loved the idea, so we also put it into practice here in Spain!
It consists of dividing our students in four different groups: the four different houses in Harry Potter, namely Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.
Once we have divided our students into these four different groups, they will work together in order to achieve the same common goal during the whole term. You can organise it as you wish, but we do it in the following way:
-Every time they play to a game in the English subject, they will win 5 points for their house.
-As we ask 2 different students 2 irregular verbs by raffle every day, if they answer correctly, they win 2 points for their team.
-When they do an oral presentation, a poster, or whatever task you want to evaluate, you can also choose to add points for their team. Basically, you can reward originality in their tasks. You could even make students take part in these decisions by allowing them to vote for the most original task, and reward the most original students by giving them 10 points!
-You can even decide to monitor participation or behaviour at class in this way. Those students who are talking at class could be sanctioned by taking some points away to their house. This is up to you!
As you can see, there is more than one way to organise it. Each group of students is different from one another, so feel free to adapt it according to your group’s characteristics.
In our personal experience, this group dynamic is working like a charm! They take it seriously because they are really competitive.
By the way, we will change groups every term, and we will give a prize to the winners! We thought of buying the flags of each house, and decorate the classroom with the flags of the winners. Moreover, we have also decided to give a higher mark for the first term to the winners.
If you decide to put this group dynamic into practice, please let us know!
C R E A T E R I A L S 