[mesmark]

I've been doing some lessons on group work and making decisions. It's been great and great for the students so I thought I'd share and maybe get some advice.

I start out by explaining how to introduce ideas:
- How about ...?/ What about ...?
- Why don't we ...?
- What do you think about ...?
- Let's ...

Then I go into accepting ideas:
- That sounds great.
- I like that idea.
- Let's do that.

rejecting ideas:
- That's a good idea, but ...
- I'd rather not.
- Let's keep thinking.

indifference:
- It doesn't matter to me.
- I don't care.

I write these up on the board, starting with ideas and how to suggest something. I throw out some ideas for plans for tomorrow and then fill in the responses section for accepting, rejecting, and indifference as I get them from the students.

After that I give them a task to decide upon. The first few are generally easy.
- What game will we play at the end of class?
- What will we do tomorrow? (There's no school.)

Then we move on to bigger decisions, like planning a school trip, making a robot, making a movie, making a main character for a racing game.

This has been really helpful for all kinds of group discussions. My problem is the approach seems rather 'sink or swim.' I pretty much just make the list on the board and say 'Go!' They do OK, but it's pretty rough in the beginning. I'd prefer it was smoother.

Does anyone teach something like this? How do you or would you go about it?

The groups are junior high and high school students.