One Simple Technique to Increase Learning: Informal Buzz Groups

If you want more participation in your small group discussions and more strategies to get students talking when you break them into groups for discussions, you’ve come to the right place! Here’s one simple technique to increase learning and participation in small group discussions: Informal Buzz Groups!

How to Use Informal Buzz Groups

Here’s how you can use informal buzz groups to increase both participation and learning in your small group discussions.

So, what is an informal buzz group? Well, an informal buzz group is something that is not assigned. It should be composed of 3–5 students. These students will come together to discuss. You almost don’t need to plan for them! If at some point during instruction you want students to stop and have a brief discussion, you can simply have them find 3–5 people sitting near them. You can formally assign these if you want. Read special considerations below for more on that.

Also, you don’t need to assign specific questions to the group to discuss. You want them to talk generally about what you’re reading or learning. That is a little bit of structure, but, the distinction is that you’re not coming up with a set of comprehension questions for students to answer in their groups.

There are not a lot of expectations for informal buzz groups! (Hence the name.) The idea is that students are going to talk about some broad purpose for the discussion. For example: talk about chapter one, talk about the video we just watched, discuss ideas around the learning objective, etc. This allows students to make connections, bring anything relevant to the table, and discuss the concept broadly. Doing so invites more interpretations and can deepen student learning.

Why Informal Buzz Groups?

The broad nature of informal buzz groups can deepen student learning by exposing them to the ideas of their peers. With less structure, you allow for more freedom. More freedom opens the concept to broader interpretations. Therefore, students can more freely build on one another’s ideas with fewer constraints. Most importantly, by having the buzz group be so informal, students will talk about things that are important to them. They’ll bring in stories from their lives that connect to the topic at hand, ask each other questions that deepen understanding, and gain important insights.

Special Considerations:

• Your class may need more structure than the concept of “find 3–5 people near you.” If that’s the case, take some time to prepare buzz groups ahead of time. This can reduce any feelings of chaos and get students talking right away.
• Keep the discussions between 10–15 minutes. For younger students, 5–10 minutes is a better range. Set them off, tell them how many minutes they’ll have, then watch!
• If the conversations are going really well at the stop point, let students keep talking!
• If the end time to stop is still a few minutes away and students are off topic or having issues (behavioral, comprehension, or anything) it’s fine to move on.