Spice Up Your Student Group Work: A Self-Selection Tool by Megan M.

Allen

1. Your inquiry question (3 points)


How can purposeful grouping of students and productive transitions
between direct instruction and group work be used to improve students'
engagement and retention of the material?

2. Why you chose this text and how it relates to your inquiry question (7 points)

One of the biggest struggles I have had in my own practice of group work
and lesson design is creating good groups. This article offers one excellent
solution that I would like to not only practice in my own classroom, but
analyze as a good method for grouping. I think that there are merits and
disadvantages tot his system, just like there are with any management or
grouping strategy. Therefore, I would like to include this article as an
example of how different teachers have managed the issues that I have
faced in my classroom.


3. What useful information this text gives you about your inquiry question (10
points)

The grouping method here is specifically meant for younger students, but I
think that these self selection methods are extremely useful in the
secondary classroom as well. There are two interesting ideas here: that of
self selection for grouping methods, ie. allowing students to place
themselves in groups; and secondly, having students self analyze their
strengths/weaknesses in order to be able to best place them in groups. The
idea of different roles in group work is prevalent in the literature, and this is
a great way that it has been placed into practice. These roles crop up
everywhere, and this is, I think, a very nice means for separating out
leaders, creatives, experts, passionates, completers, workers, etc. It also
provides every student a role to fill that they are excited about filling
because they were not pigeon holed into it. One of the main issues I would
like to explore is that students do not always accurately self identify, and
furthermore even if they do, the makeup of classes can vary wildly from
one period to the next, necessitating different solutions for grouping.


4. What useful ideas from the text you could apply to your own teaching and how
you plan to apply them. OR, if there is not anything you can apply to your
teaching, explain why the ideas in the text won’t apply to your teaching,
classroom, students, or your school’s community (10 points)

I would like to have students self identify. So far I have been running with
one of two diametrically opposed grouping strategies: letting students
choose their own groups, or randomly assigning groups. Occasionally I
will attempt to secretly create purposeful growing methods, but I still feel
as though I do not know enough about productive grouping to be truly
effective in my placements. This method would give me some solid data to
begin my grouping. I wold, however, like to see a smaller group version of
 this, as well as do more research in faster grouping methods and quick
pairing.


5. Write the citation for your text in APA format (5 points)

Allen, M. M. (2016, September 20). Spice Up Your Student Group Work: A Self-
Selection Tool. Retrieved March 20, 2019, from https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/
edugeek_guide/2016/09/spice_up_your_student_group_wo.html