Managing Group Work

TEACHING AND LEARNING BEST PRACTICES

TOPIC:

By : RANI KALEMUTHU OF

SK SIMPANG AMPAT

Seminar Pendidikan Perlis 2016

MAKING GROUPWORK IN LARGE CLASSROOM EFFECTIVE AND MANAGEABLE

INTRODUCTION


One of the unavoidable realities of working in a large school such as A-Graded School is teaching LARGE classes.

Tight classroom space definitely would not allow for quick triads or quad grouping activities.

OBJECTIVES

1. My central concern in my teaching practice is to keep my pupils engaged and well-managed during the lesson.

2. Achieve my teaching goals and the learning objectives within the given time.

3. Motivated towards pupils’ attentiveness.


PROBLEM STATEMENT


1. Most of my classes are in the low 30s, even up to 40 students . My challenge is simply that in my larger classes, I cannot monitor behaviour as effectively as I can in smaller classes.

2. During work time, I feel alright with the conversational volume that comes with collaboration, but I get so frustrated with students wasting work time. It seems that the more I assist students who need help, the more other students take advantage of my diverted attention.

3. I admit the fact that presenting and discussing a unit's learning objectives may have taken 20 minutes with that smaller class previously, and probably takes twice as long with this larger group. Also, I was lamenting over the days when I could whip around the room and spend a few quality moments with each student or group, or when I could offer immediate and thorough support.

TECHNIQUES IN MAKING GROUP WORK MORE EFFECTIVE AND MANAGEABLE


The first measure was to keep that large number of pupils talking and being listened to because I knew that I have less one-on-one time individual pupil with the given one hour time .I do ‘turn and talk frequently.

Applying a strategy in checking for understanding.

Letting the pupils fully occupied by letting them to be convenient with academic noises via fun learning activities.

ACTION PLAN TARGET GROUP Year Three pupils35 pupils [26 High Proficiency Pupils

& 9 Average Proficiency

Pupils]

INOVATION AND CREATIVITY


1. I let that large number of pupils talking and being listened to because I knew that I have less one-on-one time individual pupil with the given one hour time .I do ‘turn and talk frequently .I made them to be able to talk even for just 30 seconds.

Hot Seat Games •Break the class into 2 teams.•Place a chair next to the board, facing the class.•Students from each team rotate turns sitting in the chair.•Write a vocabulary word behind the student that they cannot see.•Each team has 20 seconds to elicit the word written on the board from their teammate sitting in the hot seat.•They can only speak English. If they speak their native tongue, erase a point from their score.

INOVATION & CREATIVITY

Ice- breaking Games


Game 1——–A perfect game for the first day of school.Break the class into 4 to 5 teams.Recite a short story about yourself listing 15 to 20 facts about where you’re from, your hobbies, etcAfter you recite the story, ask the class questions about specifics from your story.The team who answers the most questions correctly wins.Game 2——-Tell the class a few facts about yourself.Stuff like… Name, where you’re from, hobbies, birthday, expectations for the semester.Then, give the class 10 to 15 minutes to write their own. Model it before assigning them . .[Set the ground rules and let the pupils do the talking. ]Collect the student’s papers and drop them in a hat.Randomly draw the student’s fact sheets.Ask the students to come to the front of class and read their list aloud.This game is good for advanced students.

INOVASI & KREATIVITI


INOVATION & CREATIVITY

FASHION AND STYLE GAMES •Teach the class different styles and fashion for men and women.Goatee, beard, earrings, braids, ponytail, makeup, tank-top, t-shirt, ice skates, high heels, etc.•Break the class into 2 to 4 teams.•Students from each team take turns coming to the front of class to draw on the board.•Describe a person that the student must draw (“Draw a man with a spiked hair and beard, wearing a jacket, jeans and roller skates.” etc.)•Each article of style and fashion that the student correctly draws earns their team a point.

WORD RELAY


Break the class into 2 teams, each team forms a line to the whiteboard.The first student in line writes a word. The next student in line writes a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word.Turtle, elephant, turn, neighbour, read, draw, … until every student from a particular team has written a word.Make the game difficult by changing the variables (4-letter words only, nouns only, 5-letter words only, etc.)

* You can make your student/pupils build the word according to the topic provided

APPLYING A STRATEGY IN CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING BY........................


1. Thumbs up or thumbs down2. Traffic light signal strategy to show whether they “Confused”

[by showing yellow signal], or “Do not understand” [by showing red signal] or “Got it”[by showing green signal].* These are the Quick formative assessment .I will rotate my focus every few days to 5 or 6 different students.

3. Parking lot system learning where the pupils in the group write a note to reflect their feelings towards the day’s lesson and give ideas to make them more satisfied for the next lesson. This was considered an open-ended survey where I could find out my accomplishments, challenges and interests.

4. Presentation in groups such as parallel writing using word cues.

21st Century elements

Parking Lot

Reward for the best students of the Day & Groupwork Rewards

Jar Seminar Pendidikan Perlis 2016

21ST CENTURY ELEMENTS

Hot seat


STORY LINES ON CLOTH- LINES


STORY LINES ON CLOTH- LINES

1. Pps Sing a preposition song.2. Teacher tells a story of Where is Spot ?3. Then after the pps knew the story , each of them will

prepare a picture with a sentence focusing on the locations of Dot .[The children will create their own places/location to state other animals instead of Dot . Finally , one person will be chosen as a final writer to state where Dot is.

4. Teacher gets all of them hang the picture cards on the cloth lines prepared .

Enrichment : Each pupil draws his/her favourite picture and paste on the board . Later , teacher gets everyone to make a story . One person becomes a scribe.

Story Writing


•Write the first letter to a story at the top left of the board.•Each student must contribute one word to the story, in order.•Make a zig-zag pattern through the class until every student has said one word.•Write the word they say next in the story. The sentences must have correct grammar.[past/present tense]•Example: Write “The” to start the story. Point to the first student in the front row. They say, “cow” then the next student says, “runs”, …•The story will end up as something ridiculous.•“The cow runs fast and eats bananas while jumping over a duck in the tree. A girl eats fish every day and she is fat. I like to play guitar with my friend and we go to the mall every Saturday.”•Have the students read the story aloud once it is finished. They will all laugh because it won’t make any sense.

The Results


1. The pupils had a much better understanding of the Win-Win situation concept while working in the group. The peers made the group members to be prepared to struggle towards victory in all tasks provided. The high proficiency pupils had been always guiding the members to read and sharing their knowledge all the time. I noticed this when this group of members achieved similar or nearly rounded-off marks in their summative test and spelling test done recently in April 2016.

2. The pupils were attentive and fully engaged with the activities given. After this process, I noticed that I can run my less activities with tremendous outcomes of good doers rather than providing many tasks without any possible feedback. By giving up these managerial tasks, now I have more time free to spare with a child who has been absent a lot, add a step to an assignment for that advanced student, crack a joke with the quiet one who avoids others, or pose a strategic inquiry question to the whole class.


3. The pupils were made to be good thinkers and lovers of the lesson. I made my lesson filled with varied fun learning activities every day after the two months of the trial.

The reflections that were derived from the parking lot system had greatly driven me to come out with good activities upon their expectations. They felt happy when I took and applied the ideas they suggested in the class’ parking lot.

Besides that, I have made sure the pupils were in comfort zone of learning through choosing their next working members . They were be able to adapt to new groups all the time .

Other teachers felt the pupils in the classroom became more matured and manageable .

CONCLUSIONS

Trying more effective ways of managing the large classroom absolutely addressed my central concern about my teaching.

Undoubtedly, those measures that were mentioned have improved my teaching methodology and relieved me of my fear of managing large classroom effectively.

This study benefited my pupils, me and my colleagues where it illustrated the effective environment of learning to roam when our door suddenly swings open to visitors from the district, let them get an eye full of engaged, enthusiastic learners!

Thank you for your kind attention !

Date post:	10-Jan-2017
Category:	Education
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Managing Group Work

Education