Week 4: Designing Group Work

Chapter 1

In this chapter, the concept of group work is presented. It is an activity that is meant to be student focused wherein the students are in small enough groups wherein they can work together without teacher supervision. I think this would be the ideal situation in the classroom, but as we all know it does not just happen on its own. This program as well as my numerous observations shows me the ways that group work can be students in groups and group work wherein students are active in collaborative learning. The most effective collaborative learning happens when there are set rules and expectations wherein students have roles and purpose in the activity. The students seem to get lost in the concept of the activity if they have no concrete direction purpose.

The chapter also talks about the role of the teacher in group work, as the main goal is to have students work and collaborate with each other. Group work is a space where students should be able to interact with each other and think, question, suggest, answer, etc. This is a skill that is very hard to master, even for adults. Therefore, it is very important for the teacher to be aware of who the students are. Modeling is a component in group work that should never be ignored. With my own experience, I have been in situations where a group activity was effective for one set of students, but was not an option for another class. The main goal is to help students with their needs and be aware of how they might react to different activities based on their multiple intelligences.

Although being aware of students is important to successfully gauge their ability to succeed in group work, I am still interested to discover different strategies of successful group work. What do students like about group work?

Chapter 2

This chapter focuses on the concept that group work supports intellectual and social learning for students. Group work provides students with the opportunity to interact with each other in ways that whole classroom interaction does not give them. Group work enables students to have a voice wherein they might usually be considered invisible in the classroom. I have seen students who keep to themselves, open up with group work because they become more comfortable with interacting with a smaller group of peers. They are also given more wait time to delve deeper into their thoughts and questions and get feedback from their peers.

Group work is also a great vessel for students’ creative problem solving and higher order thinking. Group work and the process provided before turning in the final project lets students brain storm with their peers and think about topics and problems that they would normally ignore. The process of interacting with their group also motivates them to an answer and product to the given assignment. It gives them a sense of accomplishment that their thoughts and work was part of a group effort that is usually larger than most assignments that they would have to do.
How do students really think of group work? At the end of a group work activity, do they feel accomplished or do they feel that it was just another assignment that they needed to get done?

Chapter 3

Group work is not just a creative idea, but involves a lot of planning. Some teachers are more likely to opt for group work because it takes up time and involves less lecture time. If used incorrectly, group work can turn into a chaotic battle to reign in the students to stay on task. Group work can either be a really good activity or a useless one. Planning for a group activity needs to be meticulously thought out and anticipatory for all the things that might go wrong. Teachers should be aware of the ways that the group activity might not work or the questions that students might have. I have heard many teachers in my observations shy away from group work because of a bad experience that they have had with it. I think if they planned out every aspect of it in a proactive way, they will be more successful with it and promote student engagement and learning instead of another classroom management exercise.

Expert, academic, peer, and societal status in group work is a factor that also needs to be considered. Inequality of learning results in unequal learning of students in the room. The purpose of group work is to engage all students in learning. If students become more concerned about their status in the group rather than the actual activity, the process of learning will not be very successful. We all have seen this happen in group work. Someone ends up being the dominant one, or someone ends up doing all the work. A well planned group work activity will ensure that every single group member has a role that will promote and support learning for all.

A question that I still want to explore would be how would students respond to the choice of having only group work in the classroom versus lecture? How much group work will they really want in a semester?