“Groupwork requires careful planning in advance. An orientation session focuses the students on the major concepts underlying the activities and prepares them for the challenges of working together.” (Cohen, E., 70)
This quote was particularly interesting because it is so relevant in my classroom. This concept, for me, is a given based upon the years of student teaching and teaching education courses however, many teachers often need to be reminded of this when planning group assignments. I think that at times, we underestimate the amount of planning and thought that group assignments require. The size and people in a group need to be well thought out. Whether or not you are going to group students together who are similar in terms of their development of that subject or group together higher students with lower students. Some students work really well together while others do not. This group dynamic is something that requires a great deal of thought it order for the group to work effectively together to complete their task. Another option is to let the children choose their own groups. This choice comes with its own benefits and challenges. On one hand, many children may have an idea of who they work really well with and prefer to work with. On the other hand, you risk having children choose to work with people who have difficult times staying on task or getting the groupwork completed. The expectations of the groups also need to be clearly identified. This is one thing we really try and focus on in my first grade class. Without these clear expectations, chaos and confusion is a big possibility. The materials need to be prepared in advance and easily accessible to the group members. A teacher also needs to consider where these groups will be working within the classroom. Each group needs to have enough space where they are able to work without interfering with any other group. There is a great deal of pre-planning that needs to be done before you introduce groupwork into the class. Not to mention what you want the groups to accomplish throughout the group work. As a teacher, you need to make sure that the groupwork isn’t just a filler for the day. It needs to contain rich and meaningful information that the students will obtain.
Kristen-
ReplyDeleteI thought you brought up so many strong points in your discussion about group work, and related it to your quote. The quote really stuck out to me, talking about the importance of preparing learners for working in a group. Normally when people hear the idea of group work, they freeze up and want nothing to deal with it, especially because it is such a big endeavor. I really like how you not only mentioned that as a future teacher, we need to not only think about the dynamics of how we set up the groups, but also about the expectations that are expected, the amount of pre-planning that is required (including ready made materials), and the arrangement of the groups around the classroom. All of these factors are truly essential. I have noticed in my classroom the main one is the expectations. I think that teachers so often underestimate the amount of practice and reiterating of expectations you need to do in order for a group to be effective. I know in my class, I have to repeat the expectations every single day. True, it is a kindergarten class, but they so often forget the expectations. Same with materials, it is so important for materials to be ready. If materials are not ready, learners lose focus so quickly. I think it is also essential for teachers to point out at the beginning of the lesson the reason for the group and what they are suppose to get out of the group. I have found it helpful that when we do group work in my class, that if we state an objective for the learners and then require them to reflect back upon the objective at the end, they are much more engaged in the group work. As I read your post, I actually had an opinion question for you. I was wondering what your take is on creating groups. What do you think is the best method? I have seen and heard thoughts and opinions on all methods, from grouping learners by abilities, to grouping by personality, to grouping by varying levels of ability. I have yet to see a class in which learners are able to choose their own groups. I have struggled with how to group learners for a while. I was in a forth grade last year where they were grouped by varying abilities and I often saw the learners who were lower hide back and not really participate in the group, while those stronger learners took over. I have also seen groups of similar level learners where some of the groups struggle because those in the group are all at the same lower level. I have started to realize that I don’t know if it is so much that there is a right way to group the learners, but maybe it really just matters on how you structure and continually point out the expectations. Maybe all are effective if you create high expectations, or provide models showing learners how to incorporate everyone in the group. Just in your own experience, I wondered what you felt.
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