Blog 2- Cohen, Ch. 5

“You want to pose questions for students that will stimulate them to discuss, to experiment, and to discover. Don’t be afraid to use big, interesting words; as long as someone in the group can read them and as long as someone knows what they mean (or can look them up), the group can function very well.” (Cohen, Ch 5. p. 72)

This quote reminded me of the fact that sometimes the best learning students can have is when they learn from each other. In the chapter, this quote refers to the task directions given to students. Cohen says that teachers shouldn’t be afraid to give complex directions. As long as each group has a student or students with enough prior knowledge to understand the directions they can communicate to the rest of the group. (Cohen, p. 72). Beyond just the task directions, I think this quote can apply to the task as a whole. I also feel that this quote could apply very well to potential group work situations in my class. There are several students in my 3rd grade class who are higher performing. These students have a great deal of prior knowledge across subject areas and are also very resourceful about finding new information when they need it. For group work tasks I would make sure that these students are divided up among the different groups. Groups can be given more challenging tasks and group members who understand the task better than others have the responsibility to explain their understanding to the rest of the group. This allows students who struggle sometimes to still have access to the task while challenging the higher performing students through having them help their classmates. In theory this sounds like a good idea, however there is always the potential for more competent students to simply take over and exclude others from any involvement. Prior instruction on how to help others without giving away the answer and creating assignments designed to require the involvement of all group members could help prevent some of these problems. These are possibilities that I will need to look into before planning group work tasks in my class. So far I have not seen any group activities done in my class, but I am interested to see how my CT plans to handle these issues in group work lessons later on.