How to Promote Positive and Productive Student Interaction

Increasingly useful in school as well as professional life, the ability to work well in groups greatly benefits young people.  Student interaction while learning improves understanding of complex ideas, promotes inclusion for special education students, and teaches students the soft skills necessary for today’s modern job market.   

The pandemic’s impact on social skills and group work in class.

Following the pandemic, I observed an unusually large number of students resist collaborative group work.  Normally engaging group tasks were met with silence.  I missed that familiar buzz of friendly and productive student interaction.  What happened?

Sure, the desire to work alone can partially be chalked up to pandemic habits developed at home in socially-distanced classrooms.

Many kids were simply out of practice when it came to peer interaction.  As a result, group work turned into a painfully awkward, unproductive mess.

Without the social skills to collaborate successfully, it’s natural that students would prefer to work alone. Teachers then, in response to limited effectiveness, reduce the amount of student interaction in class.

Six Tips to Promote Positive Student Interaction 

#1: Explicitly teach collaboration.

Establish expectations for group work at the start of the school year.  Expectations might include:

• Be respectful of everyone in the group
• Be receptive to the ideas, thoughts, and concerns of others
• Be a good listener
• Do your part

To increase student buy-in, ask students to create a list of workable group norms they feel strongly about.  Agree on a set of norms as a class.  It’s a good idea to revisit these norms often and specifically use them when praising positive group behavior.

Particularly at the upper secondary level, it’s common to expect that students already know how to work in groups.  However, as the pandemic has shown, it’s very helpful to go back to basics and reteach these skills.

#2: Facilitate group interaction by having students physically turn their desks to face the group. 

For various reasons (shyness, social anxiety, or lack of connection to group members) some students avoid turning their desks in the direction of their group. Teach and reinforce a simple procedure for physically turning the desks into groups of three or four.  Or you can arrange the desks into groups before class.

#3: Normalize the use of names when students address each other.

Names play an important role in social interactions.  People like hearing their names in a conversation; it legitimizes their presence in the group.  On the other hand, interactions instantly become more awkward if a name is never used or forgotten.

“Hi, Anne. How are you today?” is vastly different from “Hey, how are you today?”

Reinforce and model strategies for asking someone their name.  “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”  If you feel it necessary, you can have students do a quick introduction before getting to work. 

#4: Show students how to be supportive teammates.

What happens when a group member contributes an idea that isn’t very good?  Is the group reaction kind? Every one of us has been a member of a group before.  And we’ve all seen or experienced the pain of having an idea rejected or mocked.  

Some kids are taught kindness at home, while others are, it seems, naturally kind individuals. 

However, when some students are excited, under a deadline, or stressed about the assignment, they may say something that is off-putting.  A “kindness tutorial” before a comment is made will, hopefully, decrease the number of unkind comments.

Practice with your class what to say when a group member contributes a “not so great” idea.  Some ideas for what to say include:

“OK, good idea.  Let’s see if we can come up with a few more before we dive in.”

“I really like Brian’s idea.  How can we tweak it to make it work here?” 

“I think Sarah may be on to something.  Can we combine it with Jose’s idea in some way?”

#5: Model active listening in class.  

Show students the basics of active listening complete with proper body language, head nods, summarizing (What I hear you saying is…”) or questioning (I’m not sure I understand where you said…”) 

#6: Utilize teacher-selected groups in most cases.

Typically, best practice dictates that teachers select student groups with a diversity of student abilities and perspectives.  You’ll get more “on task” time and also protect some students from the socially difficult task of finding partners.    

On the other hand, students want to pick their own groups.  In some cases, students working with friends can be beneficial – for example when you want maximum sharing of ideas or want to instill confidence.

Generally, most teachers default to teacher-selected groups.  There is no need to recreate groups with every occasion — it can be very effective to thoughtfully form groups and use those groups for a quarter or a trimester.

Brad has taught history at the middle and high school levels for 19 years, almost exclusively in American public schools.  He has a master’s in educational technology and is passionate about elevating the status of professional educators.