Mindful Monday- Group Work

Mindful Monday

This is where each Monday we are mindful of our pedagogy, slowly adjusting our lessons to match our theories.

Group work.  Man that statement can elicit many different responses based on what you endured in school. As the uber control freak I hated group projects.  The other people couldn't possibly do the work "right" so I would do it all.  Or most of it and let them edit.  I had to let them do something right? I've also been part of groups where the others simply refused to do any work (obviously this was after I realized teachers didn't want my work, they wanted our work).

I like trying to get my students on the group work bandwagon early.  I think it helps the ones who lean more towards control to learn to trust their peers.  It also helps those that tend toward allowing others to do all the work to learn to participate. 

My favorite thing about group work for super young children is building their communication skills.  While working on a project together they have the opportunity to practice identifying and expressing a range of emotions and perspectives.  I love that it forces them to listen to one another to be successful.

I start them early on group work.  When I worked with the 3 year olds I would set them on a task and stand back.  I would provide as little assistance as possible so that the children would have to work things out on their own.  Here they are working on creating a "leprechaun trap" after that sneaky leprechaun made messes in parts of the school.  Spoiler alert- we did not catch one!

 

With the 4 year olds we have made anchor charts where each child added a word that began with a letter we were working on.  This group belonged to another teacher and with little knowledge on their prior experiences I stayed handy to ensure we could all work together to make our chart.

 

Our Kindergarten friends have had quite a bit of practice on group work and since they can read without much assistance they were able to participate in more in-depth projects.  We learned about various countries during one unit of study.  During this time the children were brought children's and adult's reference books.  The children used the books to create a rough draft of a poster.  Many of the groups decided to use an "idea web" or "brainstormer" to organize the information.  

 

After creating a rough draft they worked on a final copy.  At the end of the day each group presented their poster to all the kindergarteners.  They had so much fun!  I liked that it put them in charge of their learning.  I really acted like a facilitator for those tricky words or tricky communication issues. 

 

 

Outside of my personal affinity for group work with young children (and clearly I'm biased on the issue here!) there are legitimate reasons to have children work within groups.  Communication as I mentioned is one large aspect.  Vygotsky really emphasized the social aspect of learning and what better way to engage the children socially than to allow them to work together with little interference from us?  Bloom (as in that old faithful Bloom's Taxonomy) suggests that being able to teach shows a greater understanding of information.  This is why I always add a component where the children have to share what they've learned.

 

Do you use group work?  Why or why not?