Before sending students off to work in groups, consider assigning a role like a reporter, timekeeper, facilitator for more structure. Rather than leave it to chance that the same people will volunteer for the role, provide a prompt that will indicate who will fill that role. Choose something that doesn't require much time to discuss and allows for students to get to know each other a bit without being a particularly sensitive question. Providing a prompt like this can help build community before diving into the task. Here are some example prompts:
The person who will be [fill in the role, e.g. reporter] is the person...
With the most (or least) vowels in their full name
Whose name comes in first (or last) alphabetically
Who last ate…(meat, pizza, etc.)
Person who last baked something
Whose pet is biggest (or smallest)
Birthday is closest to today
Whose place of birth is closest (or farthest)
Person who woke up earliest/latest
Whose bedtime yesterday was earliest (or latest)
Send us your ideas! Have you had a prompt that you like to choose a group role? Suggest them here to add to our list (with attribution):