Membership Grid

This strategy will help students to:

Giving groups a low risk, non-academic topic to discuss before they start to complete collaborative work, helps students to develop friendly working relationships. It is a great warm­up that helps ensure better academic discussion.

Implementation:

1. Students begin with a blank Membership Grid. The date and interview topics are recorded on the left and the group members’ names on the right above the columns.
2. Groups discuss a different topic each time they use the grid.
3. The group then takes about one minute to interview each member in turn.
4. As the group conducts each interview, the members take notes on each person’s answers. The goal is to ask the interviewee enough questions about the topic to elicit some interesting details, which members then write on their grid.
5. In the column under their own name, students may either jot notes on what they said when they were interviewed or write some of the questions they asked when they interviewed the others.

Link to strategy HERE