The article "The ways of teaching in groups"
статья по английскому языку

Anna Dzekan

MGBE “Chernomorskaya

Secondary school #3”

THE WAYS OF TEACHING IN GROUPS

Education, as with other industries, has evolved in leaps and bounds in recent years. Traditional pedagogical techniques, based on a teacher explaining a topic and students taking notes, may still be useful on occasion, but education today revolves more around encouraging the student to awaken their curiosity and desire to learn.

You will never be able to give your students enough oral practice through whole class work. If you divide your students into pairs for just five minutes, each student will get more talking time during those five minutes than during the rest of the lesson. From the learners’ point of view, then, some pair work in the course of the lesson is absolutely essential. In general, the lesson develops from strictly controlled pair work, where each individual question and answer is predictable, to less controlled pair work where individual students have a wide range. This is the student-to-student phase. There is a development from teacher-dominated to student-dominated activity.

There are five types of student grouping common in the classroom:  the class working together with the teacher; the whole class mixing together as individuals; small groups (three to eight people); pairs; individual work. In any lesson a teacher may include work that involves a number of these different arrangements. Varying grouping is one way of enabling a variety of experiences for the learners. Working in a group children are more engaged not only intellectually but emotionally as well. They have to think, contribute to the group, evaluate what other members of the group say, share information, ask friends for clarification, and prepare a presentation together.

As for my experience, the most widely used strategies for group work are the following:

Think-pair-share

The instructor asks a discussion question. Students are instructed to think or write about an answer to the question before turning to a peer to discuss their responses. Groups then share their responses with the class.

Peer Instruction

This modification of the think-pair-share involves personal responses devices (e.g. clickers). The question posted is typically a conceptually based multiple-choice question. Students think about their answer and vote on a response before turning to a neighbor to discuss. Students can change their answers after discussion, and “sharing” is accomplished by the instructor revealing the graph of student response and using this as a stimulus for large class discussion. This approach is particularly well-adapted for large classes.

Jigsaw

In this approach, groups of students work in a team of four to become experts on one segment of new material, while other “expert teams” in the class work on other segments of new material. The class then rearranges, forming new groups that have one member from each expert team. The members of the new team then take turns teaching each other the material on which they are experts.

Group Presentation

This strategy involves research, creativity and modeling and the teacher being a guide. It is a time consuming activity, but it is worth it as the result can be a real masterpiece ranging from the painting to media advertisement or clip. My favorite activity is to ask pupils to make up a story having a picture (the opening phrase or a piece of video) as a start.

Debating

In debates, the next rules should be strictly followed: four speakers in each team (for and against the motion). First speaker introduces all the ideas that team has generated.
Second speaker outlines two or three more ideas in some depth. Third speaker outlines two or three ideas in some depth. Fourth speaker criticises the points made by the other team. Each individual speaker has two minutes to speak (or more of course), with                                                           protected time of thirty seconds at the beginning or the end.  The rest of the team is the ‘Floor’ and can interject at any time by calling out ‘Point of Information’ and standing. The speaker can accept or reject an interjection.

The advantages of these techniques are obvious:

• students help their classmates;
• an activity does not take for long;
• students share ideas;
• it is a good way to enhance the students’ motivation, self- confidence and self-appraisal;
• the techniques propose opportunity for developing the skills of a leader and creative skills;
• it is a good way of learning the time management;
• the techniques create the situation of the success (students understand everything depends on them) and this fact prompts the students to develop quick thinking and making the decision as well as shaping their opinions brief and to the point.

   Unfortunately, there are some pitfalls too:

• there are always leaders alongside with the less active students or those who suffer from lack of knowledge, so the contribution to the result is not always equal;
• when students are asked to evaluate their classmates, they are not always honest in doing it as they think they insult their friends with low grades;
• the noise, which is not encouraged in accordance with the traditional methods.

Working in groups gives individual students a lot of speaking time. If working together, students will often have more confidence than when completing exercises individually. If students are competing with their partners they will be more motivated. They can work in groups for role plays, races, games such as board games or card games and discussions.

Group work can be very rewarding and for some students, a favorite way to work on assignments. We want students to learn to work and succeed in groups because that is what employers need from their workers. Modern society demands people to be able to be a member of this very society. It means we have to be able to work with other people, listen to, communicate with, and coordinate. Teamwork is a big part of the workplace and working with others, even ones they don’t like or ones with different abilities is a useful skill to be taught and developed at school. So, these techniques can be very fruitful in developing these abilities and making the teaching as well as learning brighter.

REFERENCES

1. Brame, C.J. and Biel, R. Setting up and facilitating group work: using cooperative learning groups effectively, 2015.
2. Brown, D. Teaching by Principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy.  New York:  Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 2001.
3. Shuvalova N. L. Teaching Groups Methods  [Электронный ресурс] / Shuvalova N. L. – 2008. – Режим доступа: [ http://www diva portal.org/]