Small groups are not the be all and end of education. In order for group work to, well, work you need to delegate authority to the students and you need to make every group member necessary to complete the activity. I have found in our classes there are lots of ways to do this outside the curriculum and that there are math activities where this is useful but I have seen very few really dependent activities that connect to the material I am teaching.
When reading this chapter I thought about researching qualities that the best math teachers at each of our schools have.
Chapter 2
Groupwork (or in this case discovery learning) can help students over come language barriers. It builds skills like problem solving, debating, decision making and gives students a sense of independence. It also allows the teacher to check in with each of the students individually. BUT it is not the magic teaching pill. In many of the classrooms I have been in teachers have been using group work in ways that do not match the outline of this book.
How do you use groupwork without falling back on worksheets and stuff? And isn't there some value to practice?
Chapter 3
Groupwork when done wrong can perpetuate social status in the class. Students tend to relay on the students who already have the content knowledge. This also can make it seem like the students with less reading skills seem like the dumb ones which is often false. This is the biggest problem that I have when i do group work. No matter how much i try to structure it students just let other more wiling students do the work.
Shouldn't we as teachers be looking for how smart they can be not how smart they are?
I assume all students to be smart, so agree with the "can be" focus. Don't equate groupwork with rejecting the place for practice. Also don't equate groupwork with discovery learning, necessarily. Continue to think about how to structure tasks so they work well for cooperative groups. And consider when collaborative groups are a better structure.
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