Ambassador Success Stories is a new series of articles by Kagan Ambassadors. Discover valuable insights from practicing teachers, administrators, and instructional coaches. Learn about their journey with Kagan and how they’ve successfully implemented Kagan Structures to transform student engagement and achievement. These first-hand experiences offer practical strategies and inspiration for enhancing your own classroom or school.
What Is a Structure-A-Month Club?
A SAM (Structure-A-Month) Club, as described on the Kagan website, is simply “a short professional development session for teachers to share what is working and to review a structure. This time can also be used to review important concepts or other content taught in the cooperative learning institute. The purpose of the SAM Club is to provide support and feedback to teachers while creating a collaborative work environment.” A SAM Club is typically led by administration, instructional coaches, a school certified Kagan trainer, or a teacher who utilizes Kagan Cooperative Learning extensively. It’s important to note that the purpose of a SAM Club isn’t to train teachers, nor does Kagan permit the training of Kagan Cooperative Learning by anyone other than a certified Kagan trainer.
Planning a Structure-A-Month Club
You can see a sample SAM Club Agenda on the Kagan website. At Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts, we do not have any meetings before or after school. Instead, we have monthly early release days, which are utilized exclusively for our Structure-A-Month Clubs. Our SAM Club is led by the school’s principal and assistant principal. We begin our planning for our first SAM Club of the year after both leadership and the school’s internal coaches have completed their first coaching of the year. After coaching, trends are identified, and a structure is selected to review based on the school’s needs and/or input from the team. Based on that input, a team agenda, lesson plan, and PowerPoint are created for the SAM Club.
The team agenda is sent out ahead of time, so the team knows what the structure of the month is and what the expectations are for the meeting. Once the lesson plan and PowerPoint have been created, it’s time to finalize materials, such as copies of relationship-building materials, coaching forms, materials needed for the structure of the month, and team tubs. On the day of the SAM Club, we make sure the room is set up, materials are ready, teams are created, and tables are numbered. Following dismissal on the early release day, we are ready to begin our SAM Club!
A Structure-A-Month Club at Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts
Let’s look at our most recent SAM Club on January 31, 2024. We kicked off our SAM Club with relationship-building via Kagan Classbuilding and Teambuilding. This provided the team with an opportunity to experience additional structures and helped to reinforce our school culture. For this SAM Club, we did Classbuilding with the Kagan Cooperative Learning structure, Fact Bingo. We created a custom Fact Bingo card by inputting a 5 x 5 table in a Word document and typing in various things that may be favorites of the team, such as: reading, the beach, cake, sports, traveling, naps, etc. You can learn more about Fact Bingo in the Kagan 68 Structures Book.
After sharing Owl Watches (Compliments from the team) and Owl Compliments (Compliments from families), which are part of our internal school recognition program, we transitioned to a Teambuilder. Our Teambuilder for this SAM Club was Celebrity Interview. Each team member took a turn being the celebrity and answering questions created by the team! You can learn this structure in the Brain-Friendly Teaching workshop and learn more about it in the Kagan 68 Structures Book.
Next, the team shared feedback for 5 minutes about our previous SAM Club’s structure, Showdown. We used the structure, Single RoundTable to complete a SAM Club form, which provides feedback on subjects where the structure is utilized, the academic function, and the part of the lesson design the structure is used. The team was great at providing tips and sparking ideas for their teammates. You can receive a copy of this form and learn more about SAM Clubs by attending the Kagan Instructional Leadership Academy.
We were finally ready to jump right into the SAM Club! We set aside 20 minutes to experience our structure of the month, PairUp Review. We reviewed the 7 keys of Kagan Cooperative Learning and did a standards deep dive, as we identified the academic function of knowledge building, procedure learning, processing information, thinking skills, or presentations that aligned with various standards. To accomplish this, we utilized the Instant Engagement Class Structures software, which includes the structure PairUp Review. We were able to add questions for review right into the software and the team had a great visual of the steps.
Following the structure, we reviewed the coaching form and shared management tips for PairUp Review. We then dedicated 5 minutes to a PIES Analysis of PairUp Review, utilizing the structure Numbered Heads Together. A PIES analysis helps us understand how the basic principles of Positive Interdependence, Individual Accountability, Equal Participation, and Simultaneous Interaction are embedded in a structure. Please see below for more information about the basic principles, PIES. I won’t spoil it here; however, I will say that PairUp Review is different from other traditional Kagan Structures.
Following the PIES Analysis, we identified the interpersonal and academic functions of PairUp Review by utilizing the Kagan Cooperative Learning Structure, Single RoundRobin. We then brainstormed ideas for how to utilize PairUp Review in the classroom with the Kagan Cooperative Learning Structure, All Record RoundRobin. As the name implies, PairUp Review is a great structure to use for review!
We concluded our SAM Club with housekeeping items and a homework assignment to begin implementing the structure of the month in lessons during the month and test it out. Each team member is responsible for sharing at our next SAM Club how they utilized the Structure of the Month, how it went, and any management tips or any issues they had with the structure. Structure-A-Month Clubs provide our team with opportunities to grow as educators each month.
Interested in starting your own Structure-A-Month Club?
Kagan has a Structure-A-Month Club workshop embedded in the 5-Day Instructional Leadership Academy. In addition, Kagan offers a standalone 1-Day Structure-A-Month Club workshop. Take either one of these workshops and you’ll be well along your way to starting your first Structure-A-Month Club!
About Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts
Evan Markowitz, the author of this article, is the principal of Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts.
Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts is a Title I, “A” rated, Kagan Model School. Before implementing Kagan Cooperative Learning in 2016, Athenian Academy was a “D” rated school. During the 2023–2024 school year, Athenian Academy out-performed all elementary, middle, and K-8 schools in the Pasco County School District, earning seventy-five percent of the total possible points for its school accountability grade. In addition, Athenian Academy was the only Title I Pasco County School to earn an “A” school grade for the 2023–2024 school year. Kagan Cooperative Learning has completely transformed the culture of our school. We encourage you to discover Kagan today!