Designing Groupwork chapter 1-3 reading response

Chapter 1
Group work is beneficial to the students in many ways, it allows for the collaboration of ideas, and disagrees with peers in a more intimate environment. Each member should have their own role and each role should be as important as the next. Each member needs to count on the others to obtain the final task. This allows for the teacher to stand back and have the students assume a greater responsibility for a given task. I have used group work many times and each time the results have been extremely positive. Students prefer in my science class to learn from doing then learn from boring instruction. I would like to know more about how to keep each group member engaged so that one does not do more work than the next.

Chapter 2

As stated above group work will encourage students that are unsure about a concept to obtain help from their peers. Peer to peer interaction is key for the understanding of concepts. Peer interaction will help with social skills and interpersonal interactions while allowing the student to formulate ideas with that of others in their group. Group work as well is so much more interesting and engaging than reading from a text book or listening to the instructor for hours. I used grouping with students that were vastly different in their personalities and they just blew me away with what they came up with as a group. I did not think they would work well together and I was very much wrong. I wonder how much group work is too much?

Chapter 3

This chapter deals with issues when grouping students up to complete tasks. Each person in a group has a certain status when the group is initially formed. Regardless if the students believe this to be true or not there is a pecking order to any group. In school there is a social status that students follow and this social status will be incorporated in the groups students are in. As well some students are more vocal while others are shy allowing for a more dominant position by some students and a more subservient position by others. Other issues with group work is keeping students on task while some students view group work as a social connection and have a hard time being on task others find group work to be non productive. With each of these issues mentioned above I as a teacher need to be pro-active and keep my finger on the pulse of my students so that I can mediate when needed so all students have a voice in their classroom groups.