Thursday, April 21, 2011
groups in my classroom
I believe group work is important to use in the secondary level. Students need to earn how to be adaptable and work with others, it is just part of life and in my opinion adaptability is the most important trait to possess. There are not many jobs that are a one man or woman show. With that said I do not think I would have used this format. Our group really did not meet at all other than the few minutes we had in class. Most of our work was done independently at home, which was our choice. Our group did not have any problems, but at the same it felt more like a free for all then groups work. I personally like meeting with groups and working on projects. Assessing group work is difficult. We used wiki and it was easy to see who did what on the lesson. I suppose that is an advantage, except if we were to work in a physical group then only one person would be typing and it would appear that the others made no contributions. I know that when I assign group work I will add a group review of each person as a component to the assessment. I would want to hear form the others in the group and what they thought of their partners for two reasons. One is I would not have to rely with just looking on the computer which could show false information say if one person did the typing. The second reason is it would give me feedback on how each individual worked in the group. I could find their strengths and weaknesses, which could help me build more productive groups in the future.
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I like your idea of how you would grade group projects. It's a good idea to do a peer review. We actually had to do this for one of my classes but the prof made us verbally review each other in front of the whole group; I feel like it may not have been as fair as it could've been had we written responses. I like how you pointed out that a peer review would help you build more productive groups in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree that group work is a good skill for students to have because it definitely is something that they will be having to do in the future. I personally prefer group work where everyone meets face to face instead of using the internet to communicate, but I think using technology may be a good idea to have students have some understanding of how to use it for certain projects. In terms of evaluating, I would also take peer evaluations as a means of grading because I think that this is a more reliable way of figuring out who contributed and who didn't.
ReplyDeleteI agree that groupwork is important. I think in a secondary classroom, most of the work must be done in class. I think there would be so many problems if most of the work in a group were to be done outside of class. Maybe if they were to complete small individual tasks for the group project outside of class it could work.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all that you have pointed out in your post, Mike. We were lucky to have the experience that we did with our group, but I know that not every group had the same experience. I feel that, for this reason, when we are implementing group work into our classrooms we must really consider how extensive the group projects will be and for what type of class. For example, implementing an extensive group project in an Honors class may work better than in an Inclusion class. But, to play devil's advocate for myself, challenging an inclusion class may be much more meaningful for students in an inclusion classroom. I think that, as teachers, it is absolutely crucial for us to scaffold such assignments effectively to benefit our students.
ReplyDeleteWe must be very careful when implementing group work. It will have the potential to really influence students learning, but also could have disastrous consequences. I plan to use group work quite a bit, but when we use it, we must keep in mind to monitor groups to ensure they are working well together. In addition, most group work will need to take place within the classroom, so that must be kept in mind.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I hate the idea of having to prove what u did and didn't do in a project. I felt stupid when I felt obligated to highlight my name red in order to show I'm doing work. I get why we had to do this for this class but, in the real word people just get fired if they're totally slacking off. Unless that is, if they're tenured.
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