Seating students in cooperative learning teams simplifies many aspects of classroom management. Here are a few of my favorite team management strategies.
Team Tubs are plastic containers (about the size of a shoebox) that I keep in the center of each team. Each team tub has 4 scissors, 1 bottle of glue, 4 calculators, 4 rulers, 1 box of crayons, 1 film canister of dried beans (for manipulatives), and small erasers and chalk for the individual chalkboards. If you don’t have room in the middle of each team, you can number the Team Tubs and store them on a shelf. It really keeps you from having to pass materials out all day long. You can number the items with the number of the team tub.
It’s nice to have a Team Captain designated each day. This person is in charge of the materials in the Team Tub, gets materials for activities, cleans desks after messy activities, collects papers, etc. Since I have the students numbered off anyway, I just have a certain captain for each day of the week. Person #1 is always captain on Monday, Person #2 on Tuesday, and so on. If we have a full 5-day week, I just spin a spinner to see who will be captain on Friday. The Team Captain also has to write down assignments for students who are absent.
I put a small incentive chart in the middle of each Team Tub lid. You can purchase these charts, but I created my own which is shown below. When the team is especially cooperative, I put a sticker on the chart. When they earn all 16 stickers they each get a coupon that they can cash in for a special privilege (take home the class pet, go help out with our first grade buddy class, have extra computer time, etc.) You can use the stickers to reward anything like attendance, getting homework done, having good behavior all week, etc. If you’d like to use my Team Sticker Chart, click the image below to grab it for free!
