Agile: The Magic of Self-Selected Groups | Jessica Cavallaro | 3 Min Read

Adopting an agile mindset in the classroom means trusting teams to organize and complete work in rapid iterations. To truly implement this framework students need to select their own groups to develop their projects. For real learning to occur there must be student agency, and this is the first step. 

Having students, led by team captains, self-select their team is one of the tenets of eduScrum. It is essential that students understand their power of choice. This is not the class they’ve taken every year with a new teacher and slightly bigger tables. Student agency is paramount to the success of the year.

This task is not to be taken lightly. If we let students pick who they want to work with we all know they will pick their friends and nothing will get accomplished.

We have worked up to this point laying the groundwork for how to pick groups and the students don’t even know it yet.  We began the school year by learning about Gardner’s multiple intelligences and exploring how all humans learn differently. The evidence was in the activities and group discussions that followed taking their “quizzes.”  Students now clearly understand that they each function in…

THIS IS PREMIUM CONTENT FOR REGISTERED USERS
Register Now
OR
You may use your member school or partner discount code !!!

Jessica Cavallaro

Jessica Cavallaro is the co-founder of The Agile Mind, which interweaves Agile frameworks into K-12 education. She is passionate about the benefits of project based learning and creating purposeful education to drive innovation through inquiry. She is an advocate for developing systems that give students agency. Jessica earned her Bachelor’s degree at Pace University and Master’s in Education from Mercy College.