Teamwork means coming together to solve a problem or achieve a shared goal. Like socializing and forming friendships, the ability to work with someone effectively is a stage of personal development that helps children build skills like listening, cooperation, and leadership.
In collaborating with others, children practice kindness and develop empathy. They learn to accept others whose opinions and feelings might be different from theirs.
Plus, when your child has a successful experience on a team, they build confidence in themselves.
Talking about teamwork at home means explaining the benefits of working in groups. Perhaps your child is resistant to the idea — they do not “play well with others” — or maybe they’re a natural leader and you want to show them examples of commendable leadership. Books are a great place to find characters your child can relate to.
As a team, you and your child can read stories aloud to discover how characters solve everyday problems and work through their feelings with the help of others.
For its 100th anniversary, Scholastic spoke with experts to identify a set of books, articles, and tips that make starting a conversation with your child about teamwork easy and fun. These resources are part of a broader initiative, called the Scholastic Bookshelf, created for Instagram to raise awareness around contemporary issues affecting children today.
Books That Promote Teamwork
Book series are a great place to start when you want to show your child the merits of teamwork. The Baby-Sitters Club, The Bad Guys, and Harry Potter are three best-selling series that find characters from different backgrounds coming together to accomplish a common goal. (In the case of The Bad Guys and Harry Potter, that goal may be saving the world, but then that means it will take one incredible team to do it!)
In The Great Greene Heist, five middle schoolers make a pact to take down the school bully, who’s running for Student Council president. Only by using their individual skill sets can this group pull off the greatest con their school has ever seen. It’s a high-stakes page-turner with a tinge of espionage for the junior set.
