Middle school science = practicing the art of collaboration

Middle School Life Science 5E ENGAGE Lesson

What adaptations do organisms have that help them survive in their environment?

Recently in my middle school classroom, our collaboration abilities have felt a little off-track... way too many direct reminders from me about what the expectations were for students working in groups, and too little self-regulation on the part of my students. This is not going to work for student scientists who need to work together, especially when the Science and Engineering Practices require student interaction.

We're beginning a new 5E learning cycle, so I started off the day with a "Looks Like / Sounds Like" discussion for two behavioral targets. Collaborative work isn't silent, which means that we needed to have a very specific understanding of what Volume Control means in the science classroom. The students contributed their ideas and then we made those our targets for group work for the day.

 On each of the group's placemats (an activity printed on 11x17 paper) I put a little box for teacher feedback and walked around giving them pink stars with my "magical highlighter" for achieving the targeted behavior as a group. Look at all those stars! 

Link to the original Google Doc file for this ENGAGE (5E) activity

All class I heard students asking, "How can we earn another star?" and telling their groups, "If we keep working well together maybe she will give us another one!" I've used this type of reward system before, and it never fails, no matter the age of the students. They crave the immediate feedback and look forward to the validation that they are on the right track when given targets to meet. As we continue working on these behavior targets, we'll experience that much more success as scientists.