How Many Student Teams?

A Vital Signs Tutorial

1. / / Laura, Mike, Sue, Diana, and Pat are teachers.
Vital Signs teachers (woooo!).
2. / / They all have the same number of students (80!), but they organize their student teams differently.
How many students they assign to each team, and what their roles are depends on their learning goals for their students AND their investigation questions.
Here’s how these teachers do it…
3. / / Laura has her 80 students work in teams of 2.
It helps them focus. It forces them to use their field time efficiently.
4. / / For every new investigation, Laura sets up usernames and passwords for each of her 40 student teams.
1 TEAM = 1 USERNAME
This lets each group of 2 students add observations to the website!
5. / / If you’re unfamiliar with the investigation set-up process, check out:
How teachers set up investigations for their students
It’s right in the Share Curriculum Resources section of the website. How convenient.
6. / / Laura has 40(!) usernames and passwords to keep track of. Good thing Laura uses a spreadsheet.
Laura’s students publish 40 observations to the website each time they do an investigation.
7. / / Mike has his 80 students work in teams of five.
8. / / This lets each team member specialize in one area of data collection: Principle investigators, nature photographers, species experts, ….
9. / / Using his teacher account, he enters usernames and passwords for 16 teams.
Mike’s students publish 16 observations to the website each time they do an investigation.
10. / / Sue has her 80 students work in teams of 3 or 4.
She gives her students time to decide how they will divvy up the fieldwork within their teams. 3 keeps communication sharp.
11. / / Using her teacher account, Sue creates team usernames and passwords for 26 teams.
They publish 26 observations to the website each time they do an investigation.
12. / / Diana has her 80 students work together on class investigations.
That means that each class of 20 students completes 1 investigation together.
13. / / This approach lets them look for a ton more species. They each get to become expert in a species that is of interest to them. A handful of students take care of the field notes and habitat measurements.
14. / / She creates just 1 username and password for each class of her 4 classes. 4 usernames and passwords are wicked easy to keep track of.
Diana’s classes publish 4 sets of observations to the website each time they do an investigation.
15. / / Pat has each of his 80 students collect data on their own wherever they want.
This approach really motivates his students. They love choosing their own spot, their own species, and seeing their own data on the website.
16. / / Pat uses the Vital Signs permission form to get the “okay” from parents for his students to each create their own Citizen Scientist user account. That way they can set up their own investigations all by themselves.
Collectively, they publish 80 observations to the website each time they do investigations.
17. / / So there’s no one “right way” to organize your students.
Experiment.
See how you like it.
See how your students respond.
Tweak it if you need to next time.
18. / / In the end, you’ll be happy because you’ve figured out what makes you and your students comfy in the field.

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