OER4Schools/Mixed pace groupwork with and without ICT/review of follow up
Review of homework
Did you try your group work with ICT?
- How did it go?
- Were there any practical difficulties? If so, how did you overcome these?
- How did the students respond to the activity?
- What would you do differently if you did this activity again?
Did anyone manage to video some of the group work and upload it to the server?
- Discuss any difficulties you had with this.
If participants have uploaded some video of their group work with ICT activity, find time to watch and critique it during the session bearing in mind the guidelines for the activity :
- Devise an open activity where groups have a shared goal and where outcomes may differ between groups, for a lesson you are teaching next week.
- Decide group size and how you will formulate groups so that they are made up of students from each end of the ability spectrum (look back at documents from Session 3.2 if you need to).
- How will you ensure everyone participates and everyone learns? How will you stretch all learners?
- Explicitly ask groups to make sure everyone understands the new concept or process; make it their responsibility to support each other and check this is happening.
- Assign different roles within the group.
Review of the last session: Further reflection on pace grouping videos from the precious session followed by discussion in pairs
Initially participants reflect on their own (for a short period of time), making notes if they like.
Then participants reflect and discuss in groups.
As before, if this has already been covered in the last session, then just review the key issues.
Same-task group work (10 min): Discussion in pairs on pace grouping. Consider the following statements and associated questions for reflection on Judith’s clips:
In this interview Judith informed us that there were 9 slow learners in her class and only 4 formed a slow pace group; these 4 scored 0 but the other 5 were dispersed in other groups who got correct answers to the same problems. This indicates that not only is participation higher in mixed pace groups but achievement can be too (and research with bigger samples backs this up). Nevertheless, the 4 who achieved poorly were also regularly absent so their prior knowledge base was probably lower. Discuss: Do you think this means that the absentees are even more likely to benefit from peer interaction in a mixed group?
Judith was quick and effective at discouraging pupils from laughing at the low achieving group. Discuss: What other things could a teacher do during the lesson to prevent this situation?
Same-task group work (10 min): Further small group discussion on pace grouping. Suggested questions for reflection on both examples (on the audio and video clips from Agness and Judith):
- What in your opinion is the effect of labelling groups as low, middle or high ability of the pupils?
- How would you like to form groups supportive of everyone’s learning? Why?
Additional things to consider:
- helping low achieving group while everybody else is working in their groups
- peer support within a mixed pace group
- assigning roles within group
