Collaborative group work is the new buzzword. People expect teachers to simply stop lecturing and just hand over the classroom to the students to do group work and just stand back and watch the students improve their writing skills.
No, it is not that simple. Teachers cannot simply randomly throw together students to do group work. Group work and project-based activities like all classroom activities takes careful planning and class prep by the teacher.
When I teach a unit, I plan out how I will present each day of that unit. Usually at the beginning of the unit, I ask students, "What do you know about topicX?" Then, I give a short lecture of that unit, go over basic terms, concepts and vocabulary. I may even give a short mastery quiz to make sure students read the lesson or understood core concepts and vocabulary.
Then, I organize more student centered activities--This is where the group activities or collaborative activities come in!
If I am organizing a peer editing group activity for instance, as I have said on previous blog posts, I would group the more able/older writer with the younger less experienced writers and let that older writer help the younger writer improve his/her paper.
It takes planning to know which student is the more able writer and which student is the less able writer.
The day before the activity, I look through the grade book. I write down the names of the students from the roster. Then, on a piece of paper, I draw a storyboard of my groups. I place the names of the more experienced writers and less experienced writers into groups on my paper so then on the day of the activity, I know right away who goes into each group.
Now if the group is doing multiple tasks, I would then assign each group member a different task so that each group member is doing something and no one person is left doing all the work. It takes time for me to figure out which student is doing what task.
If I have students do a round robin reading with each group doing a chapter, then I would assign one student to read aloud the chapter, another student in that group would take notes, and another student is assigned to present what the group has done.
So when you do group work in a class, it is not as simple as telling students to all go in a group and correct papers!
I have to set it up carefully so all the smart writers don't go into one group and I also have to make sure students who are good friends don't form cliques and just hang out with each other during group activity time.
When I place groups online, I also place the students with better grades and mix them with students with lower grades and this usually works because the A students help out the B students. I remember once students had a web quest and the B students were confused about the assignment and the A students would know to ask me if they are confused and then the A students would tell the B students what to do.
If I don't have time or if the online class is too big, then I would just place everybody in alphabetical order in groups of three.
With online group work, I find I have to do the assigning of which group does which week assignment because if I leave it up to the online students, everybody wants to present in the last weeks of the semester and no group wants to voluntarily present in the first few weeks and it is almost impossible to get anybody to want to be the very first ones to give a group presentation so that is why I end up assigning when groups present their work.
So, group work does take a lot of planning, but it is worth the effort to see students master/construct their own knowledge and learn collaboration skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment