Facilitating Small Group Activities Before the Activity This document contains information to help you plan your small group activity ahead of time. It is very important that care, thought, and planning happen in advance of your small group activity. Address Issues of Diversity and Inclusion Include diversity and inclusion topics in small group activity prompts. Become familiar with relevant diversity research. Develop a Questioning Strategy When creating the small group activity, pay attention to how the activity encourages questions and interactions. Create questions that allow for individual reflection, small group discussion, and large group synthesis. Brainstorm possible follow-up questions for the report out stage. Identify possible take home messages from the activity. If using small group facilitators, provide them with a copy of the activity and facilitation directions ahead of time. Choreograph Group Dynamics Identify active learning techniques or group engagement techniques that will be used in the session. Consider ways to maximize the number of individuals contributing to the larger group conversation. If using small group facilitators, share these ideas with them. Determine the goals and intention of group engagement activities. Plan time for individual reflection, small group interaction, and large group report out and synthesis. Determine if it would be useful to have pre-assigned small groups, paying attention to group composition when pre-assigning groups. Reflect on the Session Identify the overarching goals for the session and confirm small group activity reflects these goals. Map out the session timing, leaving buffer time for logistics and group management tasks. Create an evaluation tool and plan time in the session for collecting participant feedback.
Facilitating Small Group Activities Before the Activity This document contains information to help you plan your small group activity ahead of time. It is very important that care, thought, and planning happen in advance of your small group activity. Address Issues of Diversity and Inclusion Include diversity and inclusion topics in small group activity prompts. Become familiar with relevant diversity research. Develop a Questioning Strategy When creating the small group activity, pay attention to how the activity encourages questions and interactions. Create questions that allow for individual reflection, small group discussion, and large group synthesis. Brainstorm possible follow-up questions for the report out stage. Identify possible take home messages from the activity. If using small group facilitators, provide them with a copy of the activity and facilitation directions ahead of time. Choreograph Group Dynamics Identify active learning techniques or group engagement techniques that will be used in the session. Consider ways to maximize the number of individuals contributing to the larger group conversation. If using small group facilitators, share these ideas with them. Determine the goals and intention of group engagement activities. Plan time for individual reflection, small group interaction, and large group report out and synthesis. Determine if it would be useful to have pre-assigned small groups, paying attention to group composition when pre-assigning groups. Reflect on the Session Identify the overarching goals for the session and confirm small group activity reflects these goals. Map out the session timing, leaving buffer time for logistics and group management tasks. Create an evaluation tool and plan time in the session for collecting participant feedback.
Facilitating%20Small%20Group%20Activities.docx