By Allison Harvey-Benedum, English 7-12

Learning is Messy

Learning is messy and group work is even messier. Question marks, emoticons, and a rainbow of text fill the corners of the chatbox to the brim. The chatter flows like mud through your toes. Squiggles, shapes, and text boxes appear on the once pristine whiteboard. Nothing a little bit of cleaning can’t clean up when we’re done. Learning is digging deep into the muck with your bare hands and searching for the treasures buried within. 

In my English IV classes, we wade deep into the BOGs for our messiest learning adventures. In our online setting, BOGs is an acronym for Break Out Groups.

Enter the BOGs

Group work is an important, albeit messy, step in the learning process. A step that I prioritize in my English classroom. Working together in small groups encourages students to take intellectual risks and ask questions they may not feel comfortable with in front of an entire class. Small groups can also offer a space to play and try ideas without penalty. Small groups offer a safe space to dig your hands into the mud and enjoy learning.

According to a Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center, “Group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world (Caruso & Woolley, 2008; Mannix & Neale, 2005). Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown to contribute to student learning, retention and overall college success (Astin, 1997; Tinto, 1998; National Survey of Student Engagement, 2006)” (What are the Benefits of Group Work?). While our online setting helps students quickly adapt to 21st century tools and become independent learners, it is also a space to work together collaboratively.

BOG Activities

These are some of the activities I've done this year in our BOGs:

• Color Coding - In the BOGs, I have a list of character and thought bubbles. This was an activity analyzing internal conflict and character motivation in the Shakespearean play Macbeth. Students worked in small groups to color the thought bubbles to match the different characters. Their small group discussion focused on digging deeper into the characters and differentiating between subtle motivational changes. This could translate into a history review with key historical figures and their thoughts/decisions in the thought bubbles or a chemistry review with attributes of different family groups from the periodic table.
• Graffiti Walls - This is a discussion technique where they rotate from room to room writing/drawing as quickly as possible to a prompt - I have used this to introduce units with Big Questions/Ideas from the unit. They have 90 seconds or so to respond to the topic on the board and I “throw” them from room to room when time is up. As they go through the rooms, the conversations grow and they can start responding to each other as well. They can also respond in unconventional ways by drawing, using emojis, and adding hashtags. When they make it back to the beginning, they work in their small group to star good responses and present a summary of the conversation. It’s messy, fast-paced, fun, and students learn to analyze, discuss, and debate in a low-stress environment.
• Quote Analysis - In each BOGs, students have different quotes to analyze. They have directions to highlight, underline, summarize, and answer analysis questions. For one activity, during our Renaissance unit, students received different sonnets to scan the meter, summarize the stanzas, label the rhyme scheme, and decide the form type. To differentiate, I was able to use various sonnets from different eras. To extend, students could illustrate the imagery in the sonnet to create a themed whiteboard.  
• Gallery Walk - At the end of each BOG (time permitting), we travel from BOG to BOG and share our work. This offers an audience for students and a chance to present their ideas. When groups had different topics, students are able to teach the rest of the class about their topic.

Embrace the Mess

I encourage every teacher, student, parent, or any member of our learning community to go ahead and get a bit messy. Dig your hands into the mud and enjoy the process of learning. Go ahead! Laugh. Make loaves of mud bread. Get frustrated. Mix ideas. Have an epiphany. Change your perspective. Take a chance. Fail. Fall in the mud. 

Just make sure you always get back up embrace the mess and continue to progress in your learning adventure. Learning can be messy, but it is a beautiful mess.

“What Are the Benefits of Group Work?” Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation.     Carnegie Mellon University, 2015. Web. 12 Dec. 2016. 

Townsend, Alison. “The Literature Collection: What the Body Knows: Poems: Mud Poem.” The Literature Collection: What the Body Knows: Poems: Mud Poem, University of Wisconsin, 2002, digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=turn&entity=Literature.Townsend.p0011&id=Literature.Townsend&isize=M&pview=hide.