This site is a class blog space for new Career and Technical Specializations and Heathcare Science teachers enrolled in the New Teacher Institute (NTI) at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Class Activity
Early this year I tried a lab activity and chose the group leaders myself. I then allowed the group leaders to chose their own groups. Surprise! three out of five groups excelled while two failed. This was a major lesson to me and is supported by our fall class. Since this failure I have taken the lessons learned in this semesters class very seriously. While three groups did well, the two that did not was not acceptable, the activity was scraped, time was lost, and I needed a replacement activity. The replacement activity was not as good as the first, but worked out well.
I have also had troubles with putting students in to groups. If you let the students pick their groups, they are all friends, and no one does any work. But, if you pick the groups, and no one is friends, they don't seem to know how to work together. Something I tried last week was having my Shop Foreman walk around with a note pad. I told the class that I was putting the class into four groups. I asked the shop foreman to take a chart around and had the students put down their "ideal" group with the students that they wanted to work with. I took this list, and I broke it down to where each group will have one or two friends in it. I have also started doing what we did this summer in groups: time keeper, team leader, writer, and made them write down their title next to their name. What I assigned each student a specific duty the groups seemed to do better. I ended up with only one group that just didn't do very well, verses two or three.
ReplyDeleteKen, You seemed to have had a successful first try at this activity. I bet the next time you attempt this activity you will have more of a success. Maybe next time do what Andrea suggested and you choose the entire group. I have been in similar situation where some don't get it but don't look at it as time lost maybe its just a lesson learned. I even try to find something positive to say about the group who may not have excelled. Try it again.
ReplyDeleteGroup activity can be hard at times especially if you miss when it comes to the chemistry of the people working in the groups. I normally just do waht we did this summer count off numbers in the class and allow for the groups to choose the Leader, Speaker, time keeper and the person who keeps everyone on track. That what normally makes everything work for me.
ReplyDelete