In chapter 9, John Bean makes a strong argument in favor of instructors using group activities in their classes. Bean is particularly convincing by pointing out that group work can cultivate class unity and can give students a chance to try out their ideas, “to try out their own wings” (167) as he puts it. In a conversation I had with an English instructor last week, I heard a great testimony about the power of group work to unite a class. This instructor told me that by staging a play at Speakers Circle, her class came together, engaging with the material with lively class discussions in the weeks following. And based on my experience in the writing lab, I have found that students who get an opportunity to discuss the ideas presented in class with another person (or better yet, a few other people) do a better job thinking critically about the material, processing the information more completely.
I liked Bean’s idea that students working in groups should be required to record the discussion and present the group’s ideas (153). Besides motivating the students to finish the task and giving them some practice addressing a crowd, it never hurts to give students more practice writing. It teaches them that writing can not only record thoughts but also lead to more thinking. Thus, I plan to encourage students to be mindful of their thoughts, giving them opportunities to practice this type of thinking in groups.
In my English 1000 class, I plan to use group activities frequently. Of course, I plan to divide the class into groups for peer conferences during the revision process. As I recall from my undergraduate days (and even during grad school), professors typically divided the class into groups of three or four students for peer conferences. But Bean suggests that groups of two students are optimal for this kind of work (160). I guess that a group can be more thorough when it only has to get through two papers, but groups of two are more limited in terms of peer feedback than groups of three or four. How effective would using groups of two be in this situation?
1 comment:
I think that I'm going to have my students work in groups of two, but I think that I will have them switch partners halfway through the class period. I think that it will be easier to be honest about suggestions if there are only two people, and it will be less intimidating to have one person commenting directly to you on your work than having all of the criticism heard by a third party.
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