How to Help Kids Get Better at Teamwork: Simple Everyday Tips for Parents and Teachers
The cafeteria smelled like burnt microwave popcorn and old floor wax last Wednesday, when I leaned against the cinder block wall watching my daughter’s 5th grade science fair group unravel. Mia had her sleeves rolled up, tracing the volcano outline for the third time, while Javi slid his phone deeper under the table when the teacher looked over. Leo kept grabbing the marker out of her hand to redraw the label for the lava chamber, saying it “wasn’t dramatic enough.” When I stepped in to ask how it was going, Mia blurted, “I’m just doing this whole thing myself. Nobody else cares.”
I’d been here before. A year earlier, I would’ve jumped right in: split the work into three equal chunks, assigned each task, told them to stop messing around and get it done. I’d leave feeling like I’d solved the problem, but a week later I’d hear Mia complaining that the other kids still didn’t do their part, or that they fought the whole time I was gone. I used to think teamwork was something kids just got or didn’t get—some people are team players, some aren’t. That day, I remembered what the school counselor said at a parent workshop I attended a few months back, so I tried something different. I pulled an extra folding chair over to the table and didn’t rearrange anything. I just asked each of them one question: “What part of this project do you actually want to work on?”
Silence hung for a second, then Leo talked first. He said he didn’t care about the poster or the labels at all. He just wanted to run the eruption demo for the fair, because he’d been testing different baking soda ratios at home for a month and wanted to see which one worked best. Javi mumbled that he’d brought all the supplies: the foam base, the paint, the extra baking soda. He didn’t want to write anything because he’s bad at spelling and didn’t want everyone to laugh at his misspelled labels. Mia sighed and said she liked researching how volcanoes form and writing the research notes, but she hated painting and didn’t want to do the demo.
I wrote all three answers down on a scrap of grocery receipt I had in my pocket, then held it up. “Okay, so Leo does the eruption testing, Javi paints the volcano, Mia writes the labels and research. Does that work for everyone?” They all nodded so fast I thought they’d break their necks. For the next 40 minutes, they worked without a single fight. Javi got paint on his jeans, Leo spilled a little vinegar on the floor, Mia’s labels were perfectly centered. It wasn’t the neatest project at the fair, but it was theirs. They ended up taking third place in the fifth grade category, and all three of them posed for a photo by the volcano after the awards.
That experience stuck with me, because it flipped everything I thought I knew about teaching kids teamwork. I’d always bought into the idea that to build teamwork skills, you had to force everyone to do every part of the job, to make sure no one slacked off. But that approach just forces kids who already struggle with certain tasks to hide, like Javi hiding his phone, or pushes kids who like to take over to do everything, like Mia. The simple shift of asking what people want to contribute, instead of assigning work, changes everything.
What I’ve found since that day is that most of the time, when kids look like they’re not participating, they’re not just being lazy. They’re either embarrassed by a skill they struggle with, or they don’t care about the part they’ve been assigned. There are small, concrete things you can do every day, at home or at school, to help them get better: instead of splitting chores evenly by task, ask everyone what they’d rather handle. When you’re chaperoning a group activity, don’t step in to fix a fight immediately—first ask each person to say what they want out of the project, not just what’s wrong with the other people. If someone says they don’t want to do anything, start with a tiny, low-stakes contribution: holding the poster, counting supplies, instead of forcing them to take on a big task right away.
Last month, I tried this with my kid’s soccer team, where I’m an assistant coach. We had a new kid who never ran hard during drills and never talked to anyone, and the other kids were starting to say he didn’t care. Instead of benching him or yelling at him to run faster, I pulled him aside after practice and asked what part of playing soccer he liked. He said he hated running, but he liked setting up the cones for drills and keeping track of the score during scrimmages. Now he’s our official equipment manager for practices, and he joins scrimmages for 10 minutes at the end instead of the whole half. He talks more now, and the other kids know he’s a valuable part of the team, even if he’s not the highest scorer.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, Mia came home upset from a group project where one kid didn’t do any of the work he agreed to, even after they split it up according to what he wanted. They had to stay after class to finish it, and Mia was still frustrated when she got home. But she told me she asked him what he could do at the last minute, and he ended up bringing the snacks for their presentation, so at least that was something.
Teamwork isn’t about everyone doing the same amount of the same work, or never fighting. It’s about learning to figure out what each person can bring, and adjusting to that. We’re still practicing it at my house, some weeks work better than others. So far, asking that one simple question has worked more often than any other trick I’ve tried.
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