October 1996 to April 1997
1.3 Support Partners and Random Pairs
2.2 The Theory Behind Pair work and Random pairs
5. Conclusions and recommendations
Appendix 1 - Lawseq questionnaire
Appendix 4 - Classroom Charter
The project looks at the possibility of using random and collaborative pair work to raise self-esteem and increase collaboration in a low ability secondary mathematics class. It examines theoretical and practical ideas about self-esteem and pair work. A new way of teaching was developed from this and was trialed in class. The study concludes that while there are difficulties that need to be addressed, pair work is beneficial for the majority of students.
When deciding upon a topic I looked for something that any teacher of any subject could do in class that would make teaching low ability children easier. It had to include ways of raising self-esteem as this was part of the school development plan and I felt low self-esteem was central to the difficulties many special educational needs pupils have. Ideally the approach would include ways of encouraging pupils to be less dependent on adult help and more willing to work with each other.
I chose to look at collaborative and supportive pair work as a way of meeting all these requirements. Choosing the pairs randomly was an important part of the technique. A classroom trial focussed on developing this way of teaching and learning as part of a programme stressing collaboration and encouraging pupils to take on more responsibility for their learning and behaviour.
In the study the term 'pair work' refers to the whole system that was put in place for the duration of the classroom trial - collaborative random pair work, support partners, increased student, skills training and a more task orientated approach to lesson planning.
For pair work to succeed it had to ensure that:
The trial was with a bottom set year nine mathematics class at a secondary school in Dorset.
The school has about 400 students, around 45% are currently on the Code of Practice (D.F.E., 1994). The school has started a project called 'Over the Bridge' to raise the self-esteem of pupils.
The special educational needs department consists of a SENCO and eight part time Learning Development Assistants (LDAs) some of whom are attached to individual students and work from thirty-two to ten hours a week, providing in class support and withdrawal for literacy and numeracy work. The department is currently trying to involve class teachers more directly with teaching pupils with special educational needs.
Group 9-4 had fifteen students in it at the time of the trial. The group was chosen because:
Every pupil was assigned a support partner and had a degree of choice about who it would be. A support partner's responsibilities were:
To tell their partner about any work they may have missed due to absence or lateness or inattention.
To be the first person for their partner to ask for help about difficulties with work.
Support partners were fixed for the duration of the trial.
The focus of the trial was collaborative work in random pairs. The rules for the pairs were:
Pairs stayed the same for the duration of the task and it was always made clear how long this would be.
All the topics that would normally have been taught were covered. In a few cases pair work was not appropriate so it was not used. Most tasks could only be completed successfully by two people working together and the students did a lot of problem solving, investigating and practical work.
The delivery of most tasks followed a slightly adapted version of the six stage model outlined by Cook et al. (1989):
Engagement: The teacher provides input to the whole class.
Exploration: Paired exploratory talk.
Transformation: Students engage in the activity and start to reform their ideas.
Presentation: Pairs prepare and present their work to either another pair, an adult or the whole class. (Methods of presenting include a verbal report, a poster or a review sheet.)
Reflection: Whole class discussion and review.
Every task had clear academic and behavioural objectives, so pupils knew what to do to succeed. Behavioural objectives included 'discuss how to split the work up in order to complete the task more quickly' or simply 'play the game together'.
Student involvement was increased through encouraging feedback, taking time to write a classroom charter, using regular review sheets and making time to discuss how lessons had gone.
Nothing suggested by students was dismissed out of hand and many changes were made after listening to comments made, especially through the classroom charter. Where suggestions were not acted upon the reasons why were made clear.
The pair work put students into challenging new situations and many new skills needed to be learnt for it to work. McNamara and Moreton describe a six stage stepped approach to teaching the skills needed for truly successful pair work. As they suggest that it might take up to a year to teach all the skills to secondary age students it was decided to concentrate on the first two stages for the purpose of the trial. These were taught as an ongoing process through activities involving whole class and pair work, starting with the formation of a classroom charter (appendix 4).
Step One
Steps:
Rule formation
Boundary setting for security
Feeling safe
Trusting people you know well
All saying the same things
Teacher skills:
Making rules explicit
Feedback skills
Pupil skills:
Learning to work with one another in pairs and fours
Learning to negotiate when emotional context is low
Step Two
Steps:
Establishing new rules
Helping and encouraging
Rewarding learning rule keeping behaviour
Teacher skills:
Praise, reward and encourage
Positive feedback skills
Pupil skills:
Encourage each other
Say how you feel when rules are broken
Give and receive positive feedback
(McNamara and Moreton, 1995)
The way these skills were taught was as outlined by McNamara and Moreton (1995, p. 35):
The pair work was planned with a clear idea of what self-esteem is, its influence on achievement and behaviour and how it can be raised.
There are four terms that need to be defined before explaining self-esteem.
A significant other is anybody whose opinion is important to an individual. For children significant others are usually their parents, some peers and some teachers.
Self-concept is an individual's awareness of his or her own self composed of all the beliefs they have about themselves self-image and all the evaluations they make about themselves - respectively self-image and ideal self (Burns, 1982; Lawrence, 1988; Hamachek, 1987).
Self-image is the person an individual thinks he or she is - how they describe themselves and as such is mostly subjective. Self-image is formed from the feedback an individual receives from significant others and from self reflection (Lawrence, 1988).
A person's ideal self is the person they would like to be or, especially with school children, the person they think significant others would like them to be (Lawrence, 1988).
What an individual feels about the discrepancies between their self-image and ideal self is that person's self-esteem. It is important to note that most people's self-image is not the same as their ideal self but this does not mean everybody has a low self-esteem. It is the individual's feelings about the discrepancy between them that matters. People with low self-esteem feel that this difference is important and worry about it to such an extent that it influences their actions.
There is a definite link between self-esteem and academic achievement.
The research evidence over the last twenty years in both America and Britain is consistent: those who have low academic achievement have low self-esteem.
(McNamara and O'Neill, 1995, p. 91)
How students perform in school is linked to how well they think they can perform...
(Hamachek, 1987, p. 263)
If a student has low self-esteem (and therefore a low self-concept) their performance is affected and this leads to underachievement (Burns, 1982). For a student to achieve their potential they must have a high self-concept and although this does not guarantee high achievement, high achievement is impossible without it (Hamachek, 1987 and Burns, 1982).
It is not that low self-esteem pupils are on the whole less intelligent but that they themselves are central in their thoughts rather than the task.
(Burns, 1982, p. 185)
It is important to remember this when planning lessons, especially for pupils with special educational needs, who are more likely to receive negative feedback about themselves:
No matter how carefully we assess children through observation; how well we match the task to the functioning level of the children; how cleverly we analyse the task, break it into small steps and produce activities designed for the children to succeed, the student who has low self-esteem may well make little or no progress.
(McNamara and O'Neill, 1995, p. 91)
Low self-esteem can lead to disruption for two reasons. A pupil who is doing badly at school is likely to minimise the salience of academic success and attempt to raise their self-esteem through other activities (Burns, 1982). These could be acceptable activities such as football or music or unacceptable activities such as bullying or acting the fool in class. Secondly, if an individual thinks he or she cannot do a task and is 'thick' they are likely to act and behave in ways that are consistent with this, such as avoiding work by talking, wandering about or getting themselves thrown out of the classroom.
Self-esteem can be raised by letting individuals:
receive positive feedback about themselves they can accept
succeed in tasks that matter to them and in ways where they can attribute that success to themselves.
How a teacher gives feedback is important. McNamara and Moreton (1995) suggest that for praise to change self-esteem it must be
specific;
accurate;
realistically tied to into something the child has actually done.
Providing successful experiences for students can help build self-esteem:
Success, expected or unexpected, can do great things for one's ego, which in turn elevates self-confidence, which then is translated into higher self-imposed expectations that one strives harder to live up to.
(Hamachek, 1987, p. 272)
For academic achievement to be a source of self-esteem it must be valued by the individual. This means they must want to succeed in the subject or task, they must recognise that their accomplishment is considered a success by their significant others and they must attribute their success to themselves. This will not happen 'accidentally' - it needs a positive effort on the part of the teacher to:
(Burns, 1982)
This is not easy - "There is no action that a teacher can take that a
child with a negative self-concept cannot interpret in a negative way." (Burns,
1982). There is no sure way to raise a child's self-esteem. The best a teacher can do is
provide an environment where success and positive feedback (from teachers and peers) will
flourish and the chances of failure and negative feedback are reduced. This way the
chances of further damaging a child's self-esteem are minimised and the chances of
increasing it are maximised.
The process of education must be centred on the development of each individual and part of that development must include the experiences of working collaboratively with as wide a range of peers as possible.
(Beard and Lloyd, 1995, p. 9)
Little has been published about pair work, although much about collaborative small group work is relevant. This section examines why and how pair work can increase self-esteem and collaboration.
Pair work reduces the sense of competition as it encourages children to work collaboratively. This provides a safer environment for children to work in as it reduces the damaging effects that failing in a competitive setting can have (Burns, 1982).
Random pairs mean that students are forced to work with many different people. For students with behavioural difficulties this gives their peers an opportunity to see through that behaviour and get to know the student better. In a classroom with a 'no put down' rule all pupils are more likely to receive positive feedback from a greater number of their peers some of whom will be significant others.
Randomly chosen pairs avoids children working in friendship groups where "invariably the difficult children end up without a chosen partner and so are put together where they have no good model to follow and are likely to fail and so disrupt everyone else" (McNamara and Moreton, 1995, p. 37), so pair work increases the chances of success and of completing tasks.
When "people do only what they choose to do, they feel less successful and competent, even if they succeed, than those who accomplish a task they did not choose and that represents another person's expectations" (Hamachek, 1987, p. 283). Pair work forces children into new and challenging situations all the time, but always with a high chance of success. Accomplishing a task with a new partner can have a significant effect on an individuals self-esteem.
Berne and Savary (1996, pp. 168-169) provide a list of self-esteem 'builders' and 'downers'. The table below refers to those relevant to this study.
| Self-esteem builders that random pair work helps promote | |
| Directly, as a result of working in a random pair | Indirectly, as a result of the change in ethos in the classroom when working in pairs |
| Indications that I am liked. Being asked to help. Being included. Finishing a project. |
Being affirmed by a teacher. Being entrusted through a responsibility. Being asked for my opinion or vote. Being rewarded for accomplishments. Being praised when I work hard |
| Self-esteem downers that random pair work helps avoid | |
| Directly, as a result of working in a random pair | Indirectly, as a result of the change in ethos in the classroom when working in pairs |
| Not being chosen. Being ignored. Not being wanted, rejected. Being forgotten or left out. |
Criticism. Being complained about to others. |
If pair work helps boost students self-esteem then this will help raise academic achievement as discussed in section 2.1 but there are other benefits as well.
Working with a partner encourages students to talk about the work they are doing. This is important because "the classroom where students are using their language to come to terms with new information, to make sense of it so that it can become their own, is the context in which the most effective learning will take place." (Cook et al, 1989, p. 8)
Working in a pair increases the chances of students learning because they are more likely discuss difficulties. It removes "some of the stress pupils experience when they have to struggle with the problem alone. They are often more prepared to admit, in a small group of peers, that they have not fully understood or that they cannot read materials, than they would be in a whole-class situation" (Beard and Lloyd, 1995, p. 12).
Hamachek (1987, p. 292) quotes evidence that approaches that set out to "help students view themselves as planning, responsible, and accountable individuals" will actually increase achievement and this was part of the pair work system.
Working with a partner means the two halves of the pair can put their skills together and work more effectively:
.....since groups are even better at problem-solving than their best members individually, it is hardly surprising that students learn better when they cooperate.
(Johnsen, D and R, quoted in Beard and Lloyd, 1995, p. 10)
Working in pairs means talking in pairs. McNamara and Moreton (1995) say that pair talk is important for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties because it helps reduce attention seeking behaviour and talking out of turn - their partner is always there to talk to and they always have an audience.
Also:
For those who find it difficult to work with others the pair is the easiest place to try out different ways of behaving.
(McNamara and Moreton, 1995, p. 37)
Making children work in random pairs forces them out of their friendship groups and means that after a while students will have worked with most if not all of the class. To complete tasks successfully they have to talk and collaborate with their partner, so getting to know them better and perhaps seeing qualities and skills in them they did not know were there. This helps breaks down barriers that may previously have been in place and helps build new relationships.
The use of support partners encourages students to ask each other for help and so decreases their dependence on adults. Random pair work means students come into contact with more of their peers further increasing the chances that they will turn to each other for assistance.
If pair work can do all of the above then the lessons are bound to be more enjoyable! There will be less disruption, students will spend less time waiting for help, adults will spend less time dealing with disruption and minor work difficulties and the group will be happier because students know each other better and are more likely to complete tasks.
The Lawseq questionnaire (reproduced in Lawrence, 1988, p.17) was used to measure students' self-esteem. Lawrence (1988) writes about the difficulties of getting an accurate objective measure of self-esteem so I chose to use a tried and tested questionnaire rather than invent my own. The Lawseq questionnaire also came with standardised results students could be compared with (appendix 1).
The questionnaires were handed out during a maths lesson so any influence the lessons had on students' self-esteem would be more likely to show up.
Success criteria:
(1) The class average increases.
(2) Where individual pupil scores are significantly below the standardised score of 18 there is an increase.
The cohesion of the group was measured using sociometry, which gives "an objective picture of the relationships existing between the members of any group of people" (Evans, 1962, p. 12). The results of a test can be displayed diagrammatically as a sociogram, the main advantage being the "ease of which it can be understood. No technical knowledge is necessary, and the information is obvious at a glance" (Evans, 1962, pp. 19-20). Sociograms are perfect for showing the groups existing within a class.
Each student was asked to write down about three students (from 9/4) they would like to have as a support partner and about three people they would not like and the responses were used to draw the sociograms. The way the test was carried out followed the guidelines for accurate and practicable sociometric tests laid out by Evans (1962) and Gronlund (1970):
Success criteria:
(1) There are more positive and less negative choices made.
(2) The spread of positive choices is broader, with a few choices connecting groups not previously connected.
(3) The negative choices do not focus as much on individual students.
The assumption was made that fewer requests for adult help meant students were more independent and that those who did ask for help would get it more quickly. A record was made of the number of requests for help made to any adult in the room during the course of two lessons and listed under two headings:
Requests for adult help with task.
Requests for adult help to deal with other students behaviour.
Success criteria:
The number of requests for help decreases.
This test would have been more reliable if recorded over a longer period as the nature of the tasks set inevitably influences the results. This was not possible due to the short length of the classroom trial.
An assistant used a simple tally chart to record the number of negative incidents over two lessons. A negative incident was any action taken by a student that required adult intervention or interrupted other students' work in any way. The fewer incidents that have to be dealt with the easier it is to manage the class.
Success criteria:
There are fewer negative incidents.
A longer test period would have been better, as explained above.
A cross section of the pupils in the group were interviewed after the trial period. This was part of the process of involving the students in their learning and letting them know their opinions were valued as well as a way of getting subjective opinions of the changes that had been made.
There was no way of measuring what effect pair work had on academic achievement without having a control group to compare with, as all pupils should be able to score more highly in a test at the end of six weeks of any kind of decent teaching, unless the test had no connection with what was taught (and would therefore be meaningless anyway). As no parallel group was available this area was not tested.
The trial period lasted six weeks. Longer would have been better as students need to learn many new skills before pair work can become truly effective and these can take up to a year to learn (McNamara and Moreton, 1995) but this was the maximum period that would still give me time to write up the results. I was therefore looking for indications that pair work was having an effect rather than any drastic change.
The trial was constantly monitored and changes in approach were made when necessary.
The results are shown graphically in Figure 1. A score of 0 corresponds to the standardised score of 18 (Lawrence, 1988), a positive score indicates above average self-esteem and a negative score below average.
The pre-trial results corresponded with my personal opinions on the pupils' self-esteem with the exceptions of Ben and Russell. Russell usually refused to do any kind of maths test and often refused to attempt any new task. When talking about this he would say it was because he could not do it. When he did try he usually did very well but was no more willing to try the next time. This indicates low self-esteem. Evidence of Ben's low self-esteem came from comments he made about himself, such as "no one likes me but I'm a trouble maker", "they all think I'm stupid" or "I'm crap".
After the trial period the self-esteem score of three students remained unchanged, six went up and six down. The class mean had risen very slightly from 18.4 to 18.9. Karen's score had dropped dramatically but of the four students who previously had very low scores, the scores of all but Jonathan had risen to above average.
These results were on the whole positive and met the success criteria, although not in any spectacular way.
Positive choices
The 'before' sociogram (Figure 2) shows three distinct groups. None of these groups had any connection with the others except through Ben. Jonathan was the only student not to be chosen by anyone.
The diagram is more complicated after the trial with the number of choices
rising from 38 to 51, even with one less pupil in the group. The friendship groups
remained similar but there were many connections between them. Russell and Sean had not
entered into the spirit of pair work and made virtually the same choices as before. Craig,
Claire, James and Jonathan all had more people choosing them but Stephen, Ben and Paul
remained unpopular.
Rejections
Before the trial (Figure 4) there was a tangled mess of rejections spanning the whole group. The only people not to be rejected by anyone were Andrew and Claire. There were three big negative stars in Ben, Robert and Paul and two lesser negative stars in James and Jonathan (ignoring Jenny who left before the start of the trial).
After the trial there were significantly less rejections (Figure 5) - 40 down
from 51. Paul received many more rejections than anyone else. Students felt that when they
worked with him they ended up doing most of the work. Robert and Ben still received a lot
of rejections but less than before. Russell and Sean were rejected much more because
students considered them to be uncooperative as partners. James and Jonathan were rejected
eight times before the trial but only once afterwards. The reasons for rejecting had
become academic rather than social.
The diagrams show clearly that the level of dislike, the lack of cohesion and the unwillingness to work with people outside the friendship group fell over the course of the trial. They show that although friendship groups remained intact the students were much more willing to work with each other but that pair work does not stop some students being rejected by many of their peers. As such the first two success criteria were met but not the third, although teachers have a greater influence over the new academic reasons for pupils being rejected and over a greater length of time these rejections could diminish.
In both cases this was recorded over two lessons, the first of which was the start of a new topic, the second a follow up to this.
| Before trial | Lesson one | Lesson two |
| Requests for adult help with task. | 19 | 10 |
| Requests for adult help to deal with other students behaviour. | 7 | 10 |
| After trial | Lesson one | Lesson two |
| Requests for adult help with task. | 15 | 8 |
| Requests for adult help to deal with other students behaviour. | 0 | 3 |
The requests for adult help with the task were down slightly on the pre-trial results. Although students seemed more willing to seek help from each other this drop could just as easily be due to the task being easier than the pre-test task. A much longer time should have been spent observing to get a truer picture.
There was a much more dramatic drop in the requests to deal with behaviour, easily meeting the success criteria.
The total number of negative incidents over two lessons dropped from 35 to 17. This was a huge drop and indicates who the atmosphere in the class had changed. It had become a much happier place to teach and learn in and easily met the success criteria.
Robert, Ben, Claire, Andrew, James and Russell were interviewed at the end of
the trial period. The pupils selected were representative of the group as a whole.
Ben, Andrew and Russell said they did not like pair work, although Ben thought it was a good idea and it should carry on and Andrew thought he had got some good things out of it, such as seeing other students' methods of solving problems and getting to know people in the group better. James started the interview saying he did not like pair work but finished saying he did. Claire and Robert liked it.
Of the six, only Russell could not say why we had been working in pairs and only Russell failed to find anything positive to say about pair work.
Andrew was the only student interviewed who felt his mathematics had suffered. He felt time was wasted with the "hassles" of working with someone who was not a friend. Ben, James and Robert all felt their maths had improved because they worked harder when not with their friends and had "more of a chance to understand". Claire and Russell did not think it had had an effect.
All except Russell said that the atmosphere in the class was a lot better. They thought it was quieter, there was less trouble and they were all helping and talking to each other a lot more. James said that he had never talked to Karen before but that shortly after working with her had been invited to her party!
Claire and Robert both thought that working with different partners brought out different skills depending on who the partner was.
The only pupils mentioned in any negative way were Paul because he worked so slowly and Sean because he refused to cooperate with them.
Robert felt his behaviour had improved because of the pair work. He felt that before the trial most of the class considered him a "stupid troublemaker" but that those people who had worked with him during the trial now realised he was not. He felt much better about himself and said that when he had completed a task with a new partner he felt incredibly pleased with himself, much more so than if he had worked on his own or with a friend.
Ben felt he got into less trouble and that this was partly due to the pair work, as in other lessons his behaviour had not changed. Before the trial he said he felt that the rest of the class considered him a show off and a trouble maker but that now some of them felt differently.
There was a noticeable drop in the level of disruption and an increase in work-rate right from the start and this continued throughout the trial. Students appreciated having a lesson 'off' to work on a classroom charter and preferred the kind of task that went with pair work.
The biggest difficulty for the whole six weeks came from choosing partners and getting the pairs to accept each other. At first it took fifteen to twenty minutes of a fifty minute lesson to get all the pairs settled down and ready to work. Two changes were made - the pairs were picked before the start of the lesson by me (with a witness if a student volunteered) and the time the pairs needed to stay together was reduced to at most two lessons. I also 'censored' two pair combinations that I knew would not work. This was against the spirit of random pairs but I did not feel the students were ready. I tried both these combinations at the end of the trial and they did work together, albeit grudgingly. This helped and at the end of the six weeks pairs not involving Sean or Russell settled almost immediately.
Sean and Russell refused to work with anyone but each other almost every time the pairs were chosen. I tried a lot of negotiation and gentle persuasion, then intervention from the head of maths and the head of year and detentions. Usually Russell would either start work with his partner or get progressively more disruptive until he had to be removed from the lesson. Even if Sean could be persuaded to sit with his partner he would face away from them and refuse to speak. During the time the trial was taking place I did not manage to find a solution to this and had to work around it.
Pupils would often find any way they could to avoid actually collaborating on a task, so the tasks that worked best were those that left them with no choice. Collaboration gradually increased as a result of the feedback sessions. Pairs always had to say how well they had worked together and invariably those who had produced the best work were those who had worked together best. This had a knock on effect on the others.
The atmosphere in the class continued to improve throughout the trial and towards the end it was noticeable how much more movement there was around the class, with students asking each other if they could borrow equipment or if they knew how to do something. There was virtually no winding up and the room was much calmer and quieter.
In the last week I tried two lessons of individual text book work and the class almost completely reverted back to its old ways.
Overall, the project fulfilled all of the original success criteria, although only partially in some cases. There were some reservations about its effect on self-esteem and its usefulness for some individuals.
Most students in 9/4 felt better about their mathematics and about themselves in mathematics lessons but it is difficult to say how much influence working in random pairs for three hours twenty minutes a week can have on global self-esteem, as the varied results of the Lawseq survey indicate. Pair work can only have a real effect on the intellectual and interpersonal areas of self-esteem and even then there are many other factors involved in school children's lives. It would have been more useful to have tried to devise a test of either the students' academic self-esteem or more specifically the students' self-esteem when doing mathematics but at the time of the trial I did not feel confident about doing this.
The project failed to stop individuals being rejected, although the reasons for rejection changed from social to academic ones. I feel that academic reasons for rejection should be easier for teachers to resolve than social ones because they are more directly under the teacher's influence. It would take longer than six weeks to do and would require a lot of work with individuals and the group.
I also failed to solve the problem of what to do with students who refuse to cooperate.
The class did become a much happier place to teach and learn in and was much easier to manage. This was indicated by the huge drop in negative incidents and requests for adult intervention. I felt this was because:
Pupils were more aware of each other and were more willing to cooperate with each other;
Pupils were on task more;
Pupils simply did not spend their time winding each other up.
The class became much more cohesive. The sociograms show a much bigger change than I expected given the short period of the trial. The feeling of cooperation and of being part of one big group was the most noticeable change, and was commented on by many of the students and other members of staff.
I was able to spend more of my time actually teaching and pupils spent more of their time learning, so although I could not measure any increase in levels of achievement I, and most of the pupils, felt that pair work was having a positive effect.
I would recommend using pair work with any class in any subject but solutions to the two problems outlined above need to be worked out first. Once class and teacher have adjusted to the new way of working the additional effort required planning is very small and over time, once a scheme of work incorporating paired tasks has been devised, would disappear. The effort needed in class is actually less after the initial settling in period as the atmosphere is so much better.
| Beard, J and Lloyd, C (1995) Managing Classroom Collaboration London, Cassell |
| Berne, PH and Savary, LM (1996) Building Self-Esteem in Children New York, Crossroad Publishing Company |
| Burns, R (1982) Self-Concept Development and Education London, Holt, Rinehart and Winston |
| Cook, J Forrestal, P and Reid, J (1989) Small Group Learning in the ClassroomLondon, The English and Media Centre |
| D.F.E. (1994) Code of Practice for Special Educational Needs, London, D.F.E. |
| Evans, KM (1962) Sociometry and Education London, Routledge and Kegan Paul |
| Gronlund, NE (1970) Sociometry in the Classroom Bath, Cedric Chivers |
| Hamachek, DE (1987) Encounters with the Self New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston |
| Lawrence, D (1988) Enhancing Self-Esteem in the Classroom London, Paul Chapman Publishing |
| McNamara, S and Moreton, G (1995) Changing Behaviour London, David Fulton |
| McNamara, S and O'Neill, J (1995) Special Educational Needs Cambridge, Pearson |
The questionnaire was scored as follows:
Score +2 for all numbers answering 'no' except for questions 4, 7, 9 and 12
which do not count.
Score +1 for all answers 'don't know'.
NUMBER 
You must answer all the questions. Tick the boxes that apply to you.
| Yes | No | Don't know | ||
| 1. | Do you think that your parents usually like to hear about your own ideas? | |||
| 2. | Do you often feel lonely at school? | |||
| 3. | Do other students often get fed up with you and stop being friends with you? | |||
| 4. | Do you like outdoor games? | |||
| 5. | Do you think that other students often dislike you? | |||
| 6. | When you have to say things in front of teachers, do you usually feel shy? | |||
| 7. | Do you like writing stories or doing creative writing? | |||
| 8. | Do you often feel sad because you have no-one to talk to at school? | |||
| 9. | Are you good at mathematics? | |||
| 10. | Are there lots of things about yourself you would like to change? | |||
| 11. | When you say things in front of other students, do you usually feel foolish? | |||
| 12. | Do you find it difficult to do things like woodwork or knitting? | |||
| 13. | When you want to tell a teacher something do you usually feel foolish? | |||
| 14. | Do you often have to find new friends because your old ones prefer others to you? | |||
| 15. | Do you usually feel foolish when you talk to your parents? | |||
| 16. | Do other people often think that you tell lies? |
P indicates pair work
G indicates group work
I indicates individual work
Each pair work lesson with a different partner unless stated otherwise.
A - Academic objective
B - Behavioural objective
See main text
See main text.
Drawing triangles using a pair of compasses. Taught from board. Practice and then draw two of each type (scalene, right-angled, etc).
By the end of the lesson each person in each pair should be able to draw any triangle using this method.
A - Reinforce types of triangle.
Practice using a ruler and a pair of compasses.
Learn how to draw triangles using compasses.
B - Work together to make sure both of you can do this.
Draw some triangles using a compasses. Measure each angle. Add them up. Do you notice anything?
By the end of the lesson each pupil should know that the angles in a triangle add up to 180.
A - Practice drawing triangles.
Accuracy using a protractor.
Internal angles of a triangle.
B - Talk about what you are doing to as you do it.
Design a worksheet for a year 8 class that will teach them something you have learnt this week.
A - Reinforce the week's work
B - Split up the work and decide who is going to do what, as there isn't enough time for one person to do everything.
Work from textbook on simple probability, set for a supply teacher
One die per person. Choose an event that is a win (for example, both people roll the same number, the total is more than five). Guess how many times you will win out of 100 goes. Fill out a 'cascade' worksheet (move to the left if you lose, to the right if you win). Revise your guess after 50 goes. Discuss what you found out. Repeat the same experiment. Try another rule and see if your guess is more accurate.
A - Results vary but the more trials you carry out the more likely it is that your results will be similar.
B - Decide who rolls the dice and who records the results.
Roll one die 100 times and record the frequency of each result. Roll two dice 100 times and record the frequency of each total.
A - Starting to think about equal/unequal probabilities
Some pupils starting to see the link between number of ways of getting a particular outcome and probability.
B - There isn't enough time for you both to be doing the same thing so organise a way of splitting the work up.
Discussion of last lessons work. Notes on working out probability (P{n} = ways of getting n number of possible outcomes). A few practice questions on this. (Half of lesson)
Then, start of an ongoing project to design a game. (Any kind of game but must use dice.) Free choice of groups.
Probability = ways it can happen possible outcomes
Working from a text book, with some packs of cards to help if needed.
Whole class activity using numbered cards - pick a number to start with and a rule, e.g. 5 and 'add 3'. Person with the 5 card holds it up, then the person with the 8, and so on. Think up different rules. Then in pairs, one person thinks up a rule and the other one writes down the sequence. As a pair, try to think up a really complicated rule.
A - Learning to describe sequences. Learning to write down sequences when given an iterative rule.
B - Make sure your partner knows what you mean.
Make sure you listen to your partner's instructions.
Work together to find a really complicated rule that you both understand.
Chalk and talk intro, examples from board.
Work on games started last Friday.
The group was split into two halves. One half learnt about angles on a straight line and in a circle, the other half learnt about Z angles.
Random pairs made up of one person from each half of the previous lesson. Each pupil has to teach their partner what they learnt the lesson before.
A - Learn the angle facts
B - Teach someone else what you know
In pairs find the numbers to make the sums true. Decide how to split the work up (e.g. one writes, the other calculates; one guesses, the other calculates)
A - Reinforces index notation and calculator skills; Estimation; Trial and improvement method
B - Negotiating about who does what. (I gave them ideas about how to split the work up but they had to make decisions about it)
Continued lesson three work for 30 minutes, then played the 'Blockbuster' dice game.
A and B as lesson three.
Whole class activity collecting some data and using it to draw pie charts. Also used to explain 'mode'.
Decide on a topic to carry out a small quick survey about. Carry out the survey and use the results to produce a small poster including a pie chart and a bar chart.
A - Designing a questionnaire.
Reinforcing bar and pie charts.
B - Split up the work to save time and to make sure that you and your partner's skills are used.
Choosing new support partners, filling in review sheets and Lawseq questionnaires.
Last lesson of the term, last thing on a Friday......games and colouring by
numbers.
Green slips are merit memos and pink slips are (quite serious) referral slips.
The sanctions are quite severe but are if anything watered down versions of what the
students suggested.
It took a lot of time and will power to start the pair work off. The students were very much against working with people outside their own group of friends. Sean stormed out of the room and Russell went on strike because they couldn't work together. When it became clear that they had no choice in the matter everybody (including Sean after talks had taken place outside the room) settled down to work and produced some excellent results, with the exception of the pair Jonathan and James, who did very little. At the end of the lesson each pair reported back and it became clear that the only pair not to complete the academic objectives was the pair who had failed to work together.
After the first lesson new pairs were chosen for a week long project on pentominoes:
Find all the pentominoes.
See which ones you can fold into an open cube.
Write a report of what you have done using a computer.
Make a poster showing what you found out.
It was deliberately chosen because there were a range of skills needed this was made clear, stressing that within the pair one person might be better at some parts than others and that it was up to each pair to decide from this who did what. The academic content of the task was quite small as the important thing at this stage was to make sure each pair produced something at the end. The class was told that only one piece of work was required from each pair and that they had to decide who did what.
Academic objectives: Approach a problem methodically; explore 2D and 3D shape; presenting results.
Behavioural objectives: Cooperating with someone you may not haven worked with before; decision making about tasks to be done and by whom.
(See Appendix 2 for lesson plans for the remainder of the trial)
There was still some unrest at the partners they ended up with but significantly less than the first lesson and all the pairs produced some good work. Many pairs surprised themselves. There was also a significant drop in the level of disruption and an increase in motivation, although at this stage it was difficult to tell how much of this was due to the novelty factor.
At the beginning of the second week we took a lesson out from Mathematics to write a classroom charter. I booked the schools conference room because it is big, has a carpet and comfortable chairs and is a completely different environment to the usual room. I wanted the pupils to feel that this was important and special. We started with some circle work, talking about the kind of environment we would like to work in, what would be happening, how people would be behaving. The pupils then split into three random groups to talk about their ideas. I didn't give them any pens because I wanted to encourage discussion but there was a stony silence! So gave each group one pen and a large sheet of paper and they were soon talking and arguing (sensibly)about what they wanted. The only rules were that they had to put 'do' rules not 'don't' rules and they couldn't override any school rules such as doing homework or not eating in class. Apart from this I stressed that I would go along with whatever they came up with. After about fifteen minutes we regrouped and tried to come to a consensus. This was not easy but we did it. The three groups then went off and wrote down appropriate rewards and punishments. The finished charter is in Appendix 4.
Three of the random pairs refused to work with each other due to past conflicts (in and out of school). It was unfortunate that it should happen with three pairs at the same time but it indicated that many of the pupils were yet not able to put personal feelings completely to one side. This was not really surprising given the level of animosity between many of them. They were prepared and able to work with students they did not know very well but not with students they actively, and intensely, disliked. Only one of the pairs was persuaded to try and work with each other. In each of the other two one of the pair opted out of the situation by becoming so disruptive that they ultimately had to be removed from the room.
As a result of this I decided that the pairs would be chosen by me in advance of the lesson. It would still be random but if any unworkable pairs came up they would be picked again. This would also speed up the start of each lesson as pupils could be told in advance who they would be with. It had previously taken up to ten minutes to start a lesson when choosing pairs at the start and in public.
The two pupils who had been removed were Robert (refusing to work with Paul) and Russell (refusing to work with Stephen and wanting only to work with Sean). When Robert talked about the lesson later he understood why he needed to work with different people but felt he could not work with Paul as they had had a fight less than two weeks before. It was agreed that they ought not be put as a pair but that at the end of the term they would try working together on a project to see how they got on. Paul was spoken to separately and had no objection.
In addition I shortened the time pupils needed work in the same pair to one or two lessons at a time. This had the added benefit of ensuring that pupils worked with more other students. By the end of trial each pupil had worked with between four and nine different partners, the exact number varying because of absences and duplication of pairs.
The lessons are starting much more smoothly now. Occasionally there is some resentment but the pupils have accepted they have no choice and don't usually mind if it's only for a lesson or two. There is a slight problem with the girls as there are now only three of them so they almost always end up working with a boy, which they don't like!
There does seem to be a growing sense of the pupils feeling they 'own' their learning. There is more of a buzz in lessons and generally there seems to be more cooperation and motivation and less disruption. Robert, Russell, Sean and Ben still have their moments but now these are usually confined to the first and last 5 minutes of the lesson whereas before it was often almost continuous disruption. The classroom charter has also had a positive impact. It has helped enhance the pupils' sense of ownership and it helps classroom management as (1) they now break their own rules not mine and (2) there are very clear and definite sanctions and rewards.
Some tasks work much better than others. By 'work' I mean there is more cooperation and greater motivation. Tasks that work are those:
For most of this week the students worked on their own. This produced varied responses but most didn't like it - they wanted to work in pairs. There is a definitely more of a group feeling. There is more movement around the classroom but whereas before it usually meant someone was going to wind someone else up now it is to see what other people are up to, or to work with someone else or ask for help. The support partners aren't really functioning but they aren't needed too much as students are helping each other more anyway. I can't remember the last time someone said "He's nicked my pen sir"..... (So it will probably happen next week.)
It isn't all plain sailing though. Stephen is still doing very little work and Robert had to be sent to the Head of Year one lesson (although there were some mitigating circumstances). I have started my 'points' system (see Appendix ??) which has been very successful with 10-4. At the end of the first lesson Stephen had scored -1 and Robert 0, but this happened with year 10 at first, and now it works really well, so fingers crossed.........
Another continuing problem is that I keep missing lessons with the group due to training days (such as the CAPS course Tuesday afternoons) and the school play. It makes it difficult to provide any kind of continuity.
School play this week, so times are difficult for everybody! There aren't any real problems getting the students into pairs now. The students don't always enjoy having to work with each other but they appreciate why they're doing it and they enjoy the work more. Russell and Sean still cause problems. Russell has missed quite a few lessons as he has been withdrawn due to bad behaviour in various subjects. Sean is not really disruptive but will quite often refuse to do any work. Again this is happening across the board. It does show that pair work will not be a roaring success for every pupil though!
The dreaded lead up to holidays. Went back to traditional text book work for two lessons to see what would happen and the group instantly reverted to how they used to be. Returned to pair work for the last two lessons and they were fine again.
