Managing Collaborative Group Learning
Working in small collaborative groups is seen as an important part of scientific inquiry, and is reinforced by the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy. Scientists, and others, frequently work in teams to investigate things and solve problems. However, there are times when it is important to work alone. You may have students who are more comfortable working on their own. Traditionally, the competitive nature of school curricula has emphasized individual effort through grading, “honors” classes, and so on. Many parents will have been through this experience themselves as students and will be looking for comparisons between their children’s performance and other students as a result. Managing collaborative groups may therefore present some initial problems, especially if you have not organized your class in this way before and the idea is new for your students. Below are some key points to keep in mind as you develop a group approach.
• Arrange your classroom furniture into small group areas.
• Explain to students ahead of time how and why they are going to work
in groups.
• Stress the responsibility each group member has to the others in the group.
• Choose student groups carefully to ensure each group has a balance of ability, special talents, gender, ethnicity, and so on.
• Make it clear that groups are not fixed for all time and that their composition will change from time to time.
• Promote the idea of fair work-sharing within groups, where everyone is contributing.
• Help students see the benefits of learning with and from each other.
• Ensure that there are some opportunities for students to work alone.
• Provide students with a copy of any rubrics that address group work and discuss the rubrics with them. |