Episode Summary
Teaching students to be effective learning partners is very important. Looking back on my experiences with a new math curriculum that focused on collaboration, I have some strategies that will help you when it comes to having your students work with partners. Things like “turn and talk” to enhance communication, color-coded partner systems for clarity, and techniques for equitable participation. Flexibility and good sportsmanship are brought out through role-playing exercises and fun decision-making games.
I was not prepared on how to teach my students to be good partners and neither was the curriculum. And so I realized I really need to think thoughtfully about the lessons that I do where I teach students how to be a good partner.
Zeba ~ Ep. 53 Helping Students Thrive as Learning Partners
In this episode I share:
- Teaching Good Learning Partnerships
- Engaging Through Turn and Talk
- Flexibility and Compromise Strategies
- The Importance of Good Sportsmanship
Related Episodes:
- Ep. 34 – Easy Lesson Engagement Strategies
- Ep. 36 – Easy Tips for Keeping Kids Engaged in Lessons with Lindsay from Sweet ‘N’ Sauer Firsties
Resources Mentioned:
- How to Be a Good Partner – 4 SEL Lessons & Visuals – Turn and Talk Visuals
- Helping Kids Play: A Social Emotional Unit on Friendship & Recess Games
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey there, teacher friends. It’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and today I want to talk to you about how to teach students to be good learning partners. So last year I had a new math curriculum that did almost every single activity and every single thing in partnerships, and I was not prepared on how to teach my students to be good partners, and neither was the curriculum, but that’s an aside. And so I realized I really need to think thoughtfully about the lessons that I do where I teach students how to be a good partner. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today. So even if you don’t have a curriculum that does partnerships, you will at some point need to ask kids to be in partners for something. So listen up for these strategies.
[0:46] You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away i’m Zeba creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love?
[1:32] Music.
[1:37] Okay, so the first kind of partner work that I teach students to do and the first kind of modeling that I do for being in a partnership is called turn and talk, where the kids have a partner that they talk to on the rug about something. This is a great engagement strategy. I have a podcast episode with some more engagement strategies if you’re looking for more ways to keep your lessons engaging. But turn and talk is a great way to get everyone involved in the lesson and participating. So what that means is I’ll ask a question and I’ll say, OK, turn and talk and the kids will turn to their partner and they will talk. Now, I didn’t used to teach this as well as I should have. And I’ve learned now that I was kind of asked to turn and talk more than I ever had been. I realized I really need to teach this more effectively.
[2:25] So the way that I do this is each where I have colored rows on my rugs. Each row is assigned a partner. So each color is assigned a partner. So the blue row talks to the purple row and the orange row talks to the red row. And that’s it. So whoever’s next to you, whatever row you’re in, you learn that you’re turning to that side and you’re turning to face your partner and that’s your turn and dog partner. So that works nicely if you have rug spots that are assigned or even if you don’t because the kids will learn quickly what color they’re in, where they should turn to look at their partner. It saves the trouble of who do I look at? Well, that person’s already has a partner. Like that just is so much easier when you have an assigned turn and talk partner because this should be a quick turn, talk to them about what I said, and then turn back. The transition of turning and talking should not be longer than the talking itself.
[3:20] The thing that I needed to improve on last year was making sure that both partners get a chance to talk and teaching students about like how to take turns with who goes first and who listens and that they in fact should be listening to the other person. So I’m going to talk about that right now. One way that you can help teach turn-taking is by first assigning, while the kids are getting used to this, assigning who is going to be going first. So assigning the row that will be going first and who will be going second. So purple row goes first, blue row is listening. Then we’ll switch.
[3:56] You could also assign partners like everyone on this side of the rug is peanut butter and everyone on this side of the rug is jelly. jelly and this time peanut butter will go first, but next time jelly will go first, right? And when you’re not talking, you are listening. So you’ve assigned roles of who’s starting, who’s going next, and you’ve assigned very clearly who’s talking and who’s listening. And that is your job is to listen. And then make sure you give kids a chance to switch so that everyone gets a turn to talk. Now, you want to encourage that the kids are listening when it’s their turn to listen and not just thinking about what they want to say. So one way to encourage that is to when you’re asking people to share something from the turn and talk to the whole class is not to ask them to share what they said, but to ask them to share what their partner said. And the first couple of times that you do this, they will definitely have that blank look being like, uh, I have no idea what my partner said, but they’ll still be raising their hand because they want to share. So you’ll call on them. They’ll have that blank look when you say, what did your partner say?
[5:04] And then you’ll say to them, it’s okay if you don’t remember. Ask your partner and say, can you say that again? And then they’ll say, can you say that again to their partner? Their partner will say what they said. And then they will tell the whole class what they said. Now, the whole class was listening. They heard what the partner said. But this is modeling of it’s okay to ask someone to repeat something. And then when we are sharing from the turn and talk, we will be sharing what our partner said, and it will sound like this. So I like the idea of, and I want to make sure that this year I’m doing better with asking kids what their partner said and assigning who’s the talker, who’s the listener first. I have some really cute visuals that I’ve made in my partnership product where, like I said, you can say your peanut butter, your jelly, their cute little partner symbols, but it also is very clear of who’s listening, who’s talking. And you also could make it even simpler and just have a popsicle stick with an ear and a popsicle stick with a mouth and show the kids who’s listening, who’s talking, and then switch it for when it’s time to switch.
[6:08] So after I teach kids how to listen to their partner and how to turn and talk with them, that’s really setting the stage for what it means to communicate with your partner.
[6:17] But there’s still some other lessons that kids need to learn. So another important lesson is how to be flexible with their partner. And this is going to take not just one simple social emotional lesson, but something they’re going to be learning and practicing all year long. But you need to teach kids what a compromise is and how to compromise, right? So, you know, give the scenario of, okay, well, if I’m supposed to go work with my partner and we’re supposed to go do math stations.
[6:45] My partner really wants to play go fish, making this up, and I really want to play the dice game, what do we do? What can we do about that? And then see what the kids say for ideas for compromising. But then you want to give them practical examples of ways to problem solve. A very easy way to teach kids to problem solve and compromise is to teach them rock, paper, scissors. Whoever wins gets to choose. And then you say, okay, we’ll do the dice game first, but then we’ll do your game.
[7:20] Or I choose first today because I won the rock, paper, scissors. But tomorrow, if you do your partners the same, tomorrow you get to go first. So you want to make sure that kids are telling each other like, yes, OK, I got what I wanted, but you’re also going to get what you want. Or telling themselves and their partner, OK, you got what you wanted, but that’s OK, because after we play your game, then we can play my game. Or even things like, OK, you had to pick the game. So then I get to go first when we play the game. That’s fair. That’s a compromise. So going over these examples, writing them down on a list, letting the kids have a reminder before they go off and play like, okay, remember, if you’re having trouble problem solving, here are some strategies. Or if you’re noticing kids bickering and, you know, taking too long to agree on what to play, bring them back over to this poster that you made where you list out the strategies and say, remember, we came up with all these ideas for compromising. Which one do you you want to do. And if you have partners that you know are struggling with being flexible, it might be important for you to just sort of say, hey, I know that last time you chose first, so this time so-and-so is going to get to choose first. And it might be easier for them to hear as a direction from you rather than a choice to be flexible because it’s just harder for certain kids, especially kids on the autism spectrum, to be flexible with what they want and thinking about what their partner wants and finding ways to compromise.
[8:49] If you have students on the spectrum, you could do more individual lessons or more lessons as a whole class on more ways to be flexible, on more specific strategies that they can try. And in this case, I would do a lot of role playing with puppets or with the kids in the class. I do have a role play scenario product with different scenarios that you can work through with the kids, but it’s great for them to visualize what to do
[9:14] and like to walk through the different problem-solving strategies for working with a partner. Another lesson that partners need to learn is good sportsmanship. So what does it mean to be a good sport when you’re playing with a partner? What does it mean to have fun and learn together? And that’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re in partners. That’s why we’re working together in math. We want to have fun. We want to learn together. And we can only do that if we’re both being good sports. So what does it it mean to be a good sport? So we actually take turns role-playing good sportsmanship and bad sportsmanship. They obviously have fun with the bad sportsmanship, but the good sportsmanship is really the important one. And you want to be talking through like what you’re seeing the good sportsmanship is doing. There is a Howard B. Wigglebottom episode book. You can watch the video on YouTube or on their website, or you can get the book on Howard B. Wigglebottom learns to be a good sport, I think is what it’s called. And that’s a great add-on to this lesson.
[10:13] This lesson also connects with social-emotional lessons that I’ve done on kids playing together at recess, my play curriculum. This is a great connection to that because they learn there. One of the lessons is on being a good sport. But kids just really, they need to learn that when you’re playing and you’re winning, you’re not rubbing it in and making people feel bad. You’re saying, good game or maybe next time you’ll win. And when you’re losing, you’re not throwing the board across the room or crying. You’re saying, good game, maybe next time I’ll win. And that a lot of the games are just luck and there’s nothing you can do about it. And next time you might win and next time you might lose. So these are important lessons for the kids to learn, especially if they’re going to be playing with their partner.
[10:58] So very quickly recap on the lessons that I teach students for partnership, for how to work together as good partners. The first important lessons are all on turn and talk partners and how to make sure we’re both listening to each other and taking turns while we’re talking. The next important lesson is on flexibility. So how to be flexible, how to compromise, how to make decisions together with your partners. And finally, being a good sport and why that’s important. and how we can be a good support. So if you liked these lessons and you want more specific activities and resources and visuals, I’ve got it all for you in my partner’s product. You can get that in the link below in the show notes and check that out. But these definitely are great strategies for just good social emotional skills to have for kids learning to work with others. So super important to implement in your classroom. All right, so the quote of the day, not really related to partners, but the boy, a boy five years old was at lunch and he sat right down and just went, greetings, my friend. And I just was laughing, chuckling to myself. So that boy learned how to be a good sport, how to welcome his friends when he’s eating with them. All good social emotional emotional skills.
[12:19] So if you liked this episode, send me a message on Instagram with the code word partners. So I know you were listening and feel free to leave a review because it really does go a long way with helping the podcast. So thanks so much for listening. And if you have other partnership lessons that you do, let me know as well. Or if you want more information on anything, more tips, let me know. So that’s what this podcast is here for, to help you. All right. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you in the next episode.
[12:46] Music.
[12:51] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies if you liked this episode the best ways to show your support are to subscribe leave a review or send it to a friend I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips see you then.