So my fellow teach
peeps, here’s a teaching strategy that you can easily pick up and use at any time
throughout the school day! This collaborative learning structure, if used correctly, meets a
variety of level 5 lesson requirements according to the TEAM evaluation rubric (Tennessee’s
teacher evaluation system) such as; Motivating Students, Activities and Materials, Questioning, Academic Feedback, Grouping of Students, Lesson
Structure & Pacing, Thinking, and Problem Solving.
Quick Break Down:
T- Teacher
T- Teams
A- Alone
P- Partners
Here is how to use
T-TAP in your classroom quickly, easily, and effectively in five steps:
1. Find enough
space in your classroom for teams to easily collaborate with one another. My
kiddos use rugs in the floor with clipboards, but I’ve seen kids use small
group tables or clusters of desks.
2. Create mixed
ability teams of 5-6 students (max). Go over teamwork expectations and norms. Read more about creating and using teams here.
3. Within those
teams, assign “shoulder or turn-n-teach” partners that are also mixed ability. During this
activity, students will rotate through working with their whole team, their
partners, and independent work.
4. Find an
activity that has several different questions or steps. I love to use math tasks
or higher order practice pages with this T-TAP strategy. However, it would also
work with any worksheet or multi-step assignment!
5. Start the
activity. Make sure that you are up circulating, encouraging and rewarding good
choices, taking formative notes, and helping teams use good team-talk. (My
class has learned accountable talk and other academic conversation stems.)
The first question
or section is done by the TEACHER (T) while students watch quietly and learn expectations. This is when I give directions and explain how I want the problems solved. I go over teamwork norms and expectations before each T-TAP activity!
The second part or
question is completed in TEAMS (T). I tell my students that it is easy to tell
someone the answer, it’s hard to teach them HOW to get the answer! Our whole
class is comprised of teachers! (Hint: Sometimes I even GIVE them the solution…
they have to find and write down HOW TO GET THERE!) Click this link to watch our class working in TEAMS.
Next, Students
will complete a question all ALONE (A). In my classroom, students turn around
backwards away from teammates on their rugs and work on the questions quietly. Click this link to watch our class working ALONE.
After everyone is
done with their independent question, they turn and check their answers with
their PARTNERS (P) and discuss how they solved it. Click this link to watch our class working in PARTNERS.
Most of the time, after partner checks, I do a quick classroom formative to see how many partners agreed/disagreed with one another's answers.
** In one activity, we may rotate through T-TAP several times. I have also been known to do different combinations (depending on the activity); Team-Alone-Partner, Team-Team-Alone-Partner, Partner-Alone-Teacher-Team, etc. You can also end on the "alone" segment and use that question for a classroom quick-check/ formative assessment.
We go through this
cycle over and over in a relatively fast-paced way. The kids LOVE it when I say
that we are going to be doing T-TAP! I’ve heard teachers sometimes say that
they hate worksheets or that we worksheet our children to death. However, I
firmly believe that students need paper and pencil practice every now and then
in order to apply their learning. T-TAP is the perfect way to make a practice
page fun, engaging, and effective! T-TAP puts the students in charge of the teaching and learning, and it fosters a culture of
