The learner-active classroom is a place where students are encouraged to work as members of a team, sharing a common round table. We recommend that students are put into groups of 3 or 4 for a period of 4 to 6 weeks (usually the length of a theme so that the group can work collaboratively on a theme project.) This "home group" is responsible for planning how time will be spent in a day. The group decides when all members will be available to work on any collaborative projects and when they should work on individual activities. Certain projects, like the theme project, are usually done collaboratively. Certain activities, like buddy reading and writing review, are often done in pairs. Other activities, such as skill building, are often done individually. It is important not to assume that working in groups is in itself a goal of the learner-active classroom. To get the most out of group work we need to look beyond the outer appearance of the groups to the deeper reasoning . . .

To be successful in today's world, you have to be able to work well with others. A recent study showed that 90% of the people who lose their jobs do so because of their inability to work well with others, not due to their lack of skills. Students who are part of a home group need to plan their day together and work out the conflicts that arise. Keeping groups together for 4 to 6 weeks allows them the time they need to work through such conflicts, as opposed to thinking they only have to "get through" the week before the group will change. In today's world, we are faced with complex and critical problems to solve regarding world peace, the environment, availability of resources, the economy, and disease. Few lone inventors exist today, with more and more products and solutions resulting from team work. Open-ended problems (those with no one right answer) are best solved by a group -- each individual can air an idea and together the group can design a solution.

Many activities just don't lend themselves to group work. Students should not be encouraged to simply complete textbook assignments or drill-and-practice worksheets together as this often results in one or more students sitting back while others do the work. Reports done by a group tend to be cooperative, with the group dividing up the work to make it easier and more efficient. As long as all members are then responsible for understanding all of the information, the group approach is a good one. If, however, the student with learning difficulties, for example, is assigned the task of creating the cover while others do the research, group work can be problematic. Groups work best when students are presented with an open-ended problem to solve: create a complex machine from a combination of simple machines to perform a particular task, design a commercial to encourage people to move to your state, create a habitat that would house an endangered species, develop a set of action steps local citizens can take to save the rainforest, write a play that reenacts an historical event in which the outcome is different from the actual historical outcome.

Careful planning of a collaborative project can produce wonderful results and a positive experience for the students. Remember, it's not the group that makes the activity, it's the activity that makes the group work!