Working as Groups

Hello!

"Teacher, can I work with my friend(s)?"

You know most people's first thought here is, "No! You just want to talk, and put some of the responsibility of your work on others, and goof off, and be pains in my arse, and generally not work effectively." No? Well it crossed my mind. I remember being in school, everyone loved group work. We ALWAYS wanted to work with our friends, or other classmates (especially the really bright ones). Is that because we want to practice social loafing and slack off? Not entirely. Whether kids realize it or not, I believe we gravitate toward group work because we're social creatures. By that I mean to say, I believe that consulting with peers actually helps people to learn much better, and it is a beneficial technique of learning,

Some argue that group work actually causes children to learn less, due to the fact that they aren't personally responsible for as much work. So, if one child is writing the work out and three are watching him do it attentively (To make sure it is adequate and that they will all get good marks) the only student  that gets much benefit is the one writing the work out, obviously, right?

Wrong.

Our brains contain structures known as Mirror Neurons. When we watch someone performing a task, or observe them doing something, we can learn substantially from this observation. This is called, observational learning (surprise). The really interesting part, is that scans of brain activity indicate that virtually the SAME areas of the brain light up with activity when we are performing a task, as when we are OBSERVING someone perform the task. Neat huh? This means that attentively watching someone else do something actually allows our brains to learn it just as well, simply by watching. That means, with group work in the classroom every single child is benefiting from the work done by even just one member of that group. Students with weaknesses in certain areas can even be paired with students that have exceptional abilities in said area, and through observing the other student excel the weaker student improves his/her own abilities greatly, and actually learns a great deal.

Another benefit of group work brings us back to Gardner's multiple intelligences. While each child having unique styles of learning and presenting information may present certain challenges to teachers, it also opens the doors to great opportunities to mix different skills in groups and allow students to collaborate together and create unique work that reflects multiple different individual perspectives. Even us, as teachers can learn from this as we observe children collaborating in unique and creative ways, surprising as more than once over one's teaching career I would imagine.

Either way, my point is, group work is a positive force in the classroom, and a tool that I believe should certainly be utilized when applicable to create the best learning environment possible!

Zach