One of my goals for this school year is to do more class building activities. I do quite a bit of cooperative learning and decided that I should spend a little more time on class building activities that would make these cooperative learning lessons much more productive.

I took a Kagan Cooperative Learning workshop just before our first week of school and have used the following activity with a great deal of success during the first couple of weeks of school this year…

It’s called Mix-Pair-Share…

Here’s how it works…

1. Students walk and mix around the room while I play music. I do this for roughly 10-30 seconds depending on the size of the class.

2. As soon as the music stops, students pair up with the person standing closest to them by giving them a high five. Any students who are not paired up raise their hands to find each other.

3. Then I ask an open-ended question that has nothing to do with the content I am teaching. Student A then shares their response with Student B for roughly 30 seconds to 1 minute. Then they switch and Student B shares his own response.

**Important: While this can certainly be done with content related questions, the purpose of this activity was for me to build my classroom relationships, therefore, the questions I asked these past two weeks had nothing to do with content. For example, one question I asked was, “If you just won a million dollars what would you spend it on?” This type of open-ended question really allows the students to get to know one another.

4. After both students have shared their response, I randomly pick students to tell me what their partner’s response was…this way the whole class gets to know that student a little more as well. Plus, this holds the students accountable for listening to their partner.

What’s great about this activity is that it takes very little time…just a few minutes to complete the whole thing. Yet, it gets the students up and moving, and more importantly, it helps build relationships that will pay off in the long run. It’s real easy to do this a couple of times a week when school first starts, but it is also something teachers should continue throughout the year.

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For more information Kagan cooperative learning and other great classroom building activities, make sure to read:

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