Reading Reflection "Designing Groupwork"

Chapter 1
The book describes group work as students working together in a group small enough so that everyone can participate on the assigned task. Students are encouraged to ask questions, make suggestions, listen, agree, disagree etc to come up with a good final product. Research has shown that there are desirable effects that result from group work.

Last semester I was able to set up a lot of different activities where the students could engage with each other. I do think that group work is a great way to aid in student learning. Teenagers are talkers and instead of fighting that natural urge for them talk I think we should feed into and use to it everyone's advantage.


Chapter 2
Why Group Work
This chapter explains that group work is essential in both intellectual and social growth for students. Group work will help students intellectually by helping them with conceptual learning, creative problem solving, developing higher order thinking skills, oral language skills as well as help them with basic skills. Socially group work teaches positive inter group relations, how socialize like adults, and how to stay on task.

If there is so much research about why group work is so efficent I wonder why some schools and teachers are still hesitant to adopt this style of teaching. Last semester my teacher encouraged trying to incorporate as much group work in to the class as possible. This semester is going to be a challenge because Oceanside is on the notebook system which encourages a lot of power points and teacher directed learning. I hope that I can some how involve group work still into the class


Chapter 3
The Dilema of Work
This chapter covers the problems that many teachers have when incorporating group work into the classroom. Like the real world, students will develope different statuses within their small groups. These statuses vary from expert, academic, peer and social. Teachers need to find a way to create as much equal interaction as possible in the groups

My teacher last semester gave me numerous ideas of ways to make sure all the students in the group had a different role. One thing I liked for posters was "your color your credjavascript:void(0)it". Every student had a color and had to put something down on the poster. This way each student had to participate and the other students needed that student to do good which encouraged better group work. Its good to try and get all the students involved but also be empathetic that some students might be nervous and stand backish in different social situations.