Transcript Group work a) how to ensure everybody's participation in

Content
Why do group work?
 How to set up pair and group work
 General strategies
 Designing group work
 Allocation of roles and tasks
 Organizing learning groups
 Conflict
 Criticism
 How to deal with uncooperative students
 Evaluating group work
 Dividing into pairs, groups of three and groups of four or more
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Why do group work?
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Group work encourages critical thinking by discussion.
Information is retained for longer than it would be if
working alone.
Group work enhances and develops the ability to learn.
Students learn best when they are actively involved in
the process.
Many subjects are mastered through dialogue and
discussion
Students who work in collaborative groups also appear
more satisfied with their classes.
How to set up pair and group work
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Be sure to fully explain the procedure before
splitting the class up.
The teacher should demonstrate the activity (with
the help of a volunteer) or show some examples
first .
Ask them to tell you what they have to do before
they do it (in their mother tongue if need be) to
check their understanding.
Have fill in activities ready for the quick finishers –
but be sure that they have completed the task
correctly first and haven’t just finished early because
they misunderstood what they had to do.
How to set up pair and group work
Don’t forget to have feedback time after
group work so that the children don’t feel that
they have been wasting time. It’s important to
share their work as a whole group although
this doesn’t have to be systematic.
 Set a clear time limit.
 Control who works with who so children
aren’t always being dominated or dominating
others.
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General strategies
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Carefully explain to your class how the
groups will operate and how students will
be graded.
It is very important to tell students exactly
what they should do. In addition to a welldefined task, every group needs to know how
to start, when the task is done, and some
guidance about the participation of members.
Also explain how students will be graded.
General strategies
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Give students the skills they need to
succeed in groups.
Many students have never worked in
collaborative learning groups and may need
practice in such skills as active and tolerant
listening, helping one another in mastering
content, giving and receiving constructive
criticism, and managing disagreements.
Discuss these skills with your students and
model and reinforce them during class.
Designing group work
 Create
group tasks that require interdependence.
The students in a group must perceive that they "sink
or swim" together, that each member is responsible to
and dependent on all the others, and that one cannot
succeed unless all in the group succeed. Strategies for
promoting interdependence include specifying common
rewards for the group, encouraging students to divide
up the work, and formulating tasks that force students
to reach a consensus (opinion which all students agree
with).
Designing group work
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Make the group work relevant.
Students must perceive the group tasks as
integral to the course objectives. It is believed
that groups succeed best with tasks involving
judgment, e.g. Each group prepares a report,
and a representative from each group is
selected to present the group's solution. The
approaches used by the various groups are
compared and discussed by the entire class.
Designing group work
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Assign group tasks that allow for a fair
division of work.
Try to structure the tasks so that each group
member can make an equal contribution. All
the members work together to include the
individual contributions into the final report.
Allocation of roles and tasks
Roles and tasks need to be allocated to
members on the basis of strengths and
weaknesses.
 The hardest part is to find a role that
everyone is suited to.
 You will need to discuss as a group what the
roles are.
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Organizing learning groups
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Decide how the groups will be formed.
Self-selected groups seem to work best in small classes. Still
other teachers prefer to form the groups themselves. They form
groups of better students and weaker ones to make sure that
members of each group participate.
Be conscious of group size.
In general, groups of four or five members work best. Larger
groups decrease each member's opportunity to participate
actively.
The less skillful the group members are, the smaller the groups
should be. The shorter amount of time available is, the smaller
the groups should be.
Organizing learning groups
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Keep groups together.
When a group is not working well, avoid breaking it up,
even if the group requests it. When you try to form new
groups you can throw off successful groups processes.
Beside that, members of the troubled group should learn
to cope with its unproductive interactions.
Help groups plan how to proceed.
Ask each group to devise a plan of action: who will be
doing what and when.
Conflict
A certain degree of conflict is useful and is a
sign that the group is functioning healthily.
 Too much conflict suggests communication
problems which must be resolved.
 Conflict usually arises from unclear aims and
objectives. To avoid this, set down the aims
and objectives of the group for the whole
project at all levels as early as possible.
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Criticism
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Criticism should be actively encouraged.
When you criticise, raise and analyse the good
points as well as the bad points.
When raising negative points, formulate ways to
build on them and move forward.
Good criticism will help others to evaluate their
own work more effectively.
If you do not criticise well, you will not be seen as
objective.
Criticism should be neutral.
How to deal with uncooperative students
Provide mechanisms for groups to deal with
uncooperative members.
 Keep the groups of three students: it is hard to be a
shirker (lazy, evasive student) in a small group.
 Make it clear that each group must find its own way to
handle unproductive group behavior.
 Allow the groups, by majority vote, to dismiss a member
who is not carrying a fair share. Students who are
dropped from a group must persuade the group to
reconsider, find acceptance in another group, or take a
failing grade for the project.
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How to deal with uncooperative students
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Some people recommends telling the class that after
the group task is completed, each student will submit
to the teacher an anonymous assessment of the
participation of the other group members: who did
extra work and who shirked work. If several people
indicate that an individual did less than a fair share, that
person could receive a lower grade than the rest of the
group.
Evaluating group work
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Ensure that individual student participates
and that the groups know how their
members are doing.
(Ways to ensure that students know what is
done in the group include giving spot quizzes
to be completed individually and calling on
individual students to present their group's
progress. )
Evaluating group work
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Give students an opportunity to evaluate
the effectiveness of their group.
Ask group members to discuss two questions:
What action has each member taken that was
helpful for the group? What action could each
member take to make the group even better?
(At the end of the project, ask students to
complete a brief evaluation form on the
effectiveness of the group and its members.)
Evaluating group work
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Decide how to grade members of the group.
We can grade this way:
Give all members of the group the same marks.
Grade students individually. (This inevitably leads
to competition within the group and thus
subverts the benefits of group work.)
Grade the contribution of each student on the
basis of individual test scores or the group's
evaluation of each member's work.
Dividing into pairs
1. Compound words (cross – word)
2. Word parts (num – ber)
3. Idioms (an Achilles´ - heel)
4. Proverbs (A barking dog – never bites.)
5. Question + Answer (How old are you? – I am 13.)
6. Problem + Solution (car problem – car mechanic)
7. Object + Object (knife – fork)
8. Famous pairs (Shrek – Fiona)
9. Antonyms (good - bad)
10. Synonyms (grandfather – grandpa)
Dividing into groups of three
1. Synonyms (postpone – put off – delay)
2. Conversations/Dialogues
(statement - reaction – statement, e.g. Can you help me,
please? - Yes, what happened? – I have a problem with
my car.)
3. Line-up
(cat – dog – mouse / teacher – cook – shop assistant)
Dividing into groups of four or more
1. Picture puzzle (parts of pictures to be
matched)
2. Common denominator (run – jump – walk –
go / write – draw – type – paint)
3. Line-up