I lean on collaborative learning

 As a teacher managing a class of 30 kids, I lean on collaborative learning among the students in order to divide my focus on the most critical situations. I would like the individual’s ability to work in a group to be developed in order to have a cohesive and friendly environment. I need a group of students with this ability and hence I need to organize the learning conditions (Gagne et. al/, 1992) for the same.

This is a mixed ability class of grade 9. Their behaviour is of various levels. I made several efforts to bring them into groups but with little success. Here is the sequence of attempts till I was successful:

1. Students in each group complained that they did not wish to work with the team given to them. So I asked them to build their own teams. But then some had all bright students while some had all weak students. One of the students, E, had severe ADHD and would disturb others.
2. I told them that I would create groups daily and would expect them to work just for the day in the group assigned. For this I created number chits and depending on the one they picked, they had to join the corner. But they eye balled with each other as they recognized the paper patterns and tried to get into groups with friends again.
3. I changed the paper slips daily. They could not identify the patterns and hence went into different groups on daily basis. Here I put a stop for changes by giving them choice ‘different partners daily or lecture method’. They chose the groups of course!
4. The kid E was still hanging loosely as he could not focus anywhere. I noticed a very compassionate girl with whom he was calm and made them a ‘permanent pair’.
5. The last problem was a very bright student who was an introvert and wanted to work on his own. I had to finally acquiesce as he was very sad in a group.

So, starting with a collaborative class, I moved to a mixed setting class and finally had a strategy that worked well. This worked for I was in a school with easy to move single seating furniture. Kids could move it around with ease and make their groups or be seated alone. This IB school also gave a lot of freedom to teachers and hence if any group wanted, they could sprawl on the floor or outside in the lawn and work. The only condition I had was fulfilling the timeline given to them. With the freedom associated with work, the late submissions reduced.

 

References

Gagne, R. M., Briggs, L. J., & Wager, W. W. (1992). Principles of instructional design.  https://www.hcs64.com/files/Principles%20of%20instructional%20design.pdf