Collaborative Study Groups: AVID Strategies

Collaborative Study Groups (CSGs) are an excellent way to get students working together in a format that is less rigid than an official AVID tutorial. In CSGs, students work together to identify gaps in their learning, use inquiry and discussion to fill in these gaps, and apply their knowledge to the course and content. CSGs don't just help with content knowledge, they also help integrate all the aspects of WICOR into your lesson.

This 3-minute video gives you a great introduction to Collaborative Study Groups and references some of the resources below: Collaborative Study Group Intro Video

There are 4 roles in a CSG. The three required roles are Teacher, Student Group Member, and Student Presenter. The fourth role is the Student Leader/Group Facilitator, and this role is optional. View or download a guide to these roles with this link: Collaborative Study Groups Roles & Responsibilities

CSGs have 3 main parts:

• Before: The teacher or students choose a topic/question. It's ideal if students can review the topic/question individually before the study groups start.
• During: Students collaborate to deepen their knowledge of the topic. The teacher circulates and supports.
• After: Students reflect on their learning and their participation in the groups. 

This document gives a teacher overview of CSGs: Collaborative Study Groups Overview. The overview also provides many links to great downloadable resources to use before, during, and after the study groups (links are in the Resource Guide on page 3). You need a MyAVID.org username and password in order to access these printables. Many Site Team Members and/or those who have attended AVID conferences in the past already have one. Debbie and I would be happy to provide you with a username and password for this site if you do not already have one and want one. Just email us! Here are examples of the types of documents on the MyAVID.org site that you can access with a username and password. I downloaded these so you could open them.

• Collaborative Study Groups Grouping Guide
• Teacher Implementation Guide
• Collaborative Study Group Pre-Work

Here's an additional video that shows how one teacher uses CSGs in her calculus classroom: Collaborative Study Groups Math Video

If you have used CSGs in your classroom, please feel free to share your tips and success stories below!