Improving My Teaching # 2

The second experience that caused me to evaluate my teaching methods (specifically my classroom management skills) was with year 7 history. The class went smoothly as students worked in pairs to write a transcript for a conversation between two Indigenous peoples on the topic of contact and colonisation. However due to previous bad behaviour I had spilt up two students (student A and student B) who constantly distracted each other and the class. Student A approached me asking to work with another student that I was worried could also be talkative and distracting. However they bargained with me by agreeing to perform their conversation to the class. I aloud them to work together and was pleased to see that they worked very well together. The problem came when student B became upset with who she was working with (as they weren’t friends) and decided to do no work at all. I spoke to student B after class and listened to her explain to me that when I aloud Student A to work with a friend and not Student B she felt left out. I explained that she needed to work well in class if she wanted to work with friends. I had been made to feel unfair and began trying to rectify it by agreeing that I would attempt not to exclude her when classmates got to work with friends. She sat there with puppy dog eyes until she had gotten what she wanted and then left the class with not a care about what I had said to her.

There were two problems within this class that I felt I needed to improve upon. Firstly the implementation of group / pair work and secondly my execution of classroom management strategies. In order to improve in these two areas I made sure that I was incredibly planned and organised for group/ pair work and had come prepared with management strategies. Such as, seating plans, clearly communicating expectations, giving distracting students specific responsibilities in class and addressing talking students by name.

In terms of groups work, “if the relationships between grouping size, interaction type and learning tasks in groups are planned strategically then learning experiences will be more effective. However, research suggests that the relationships between these elements are often unplanned and the ‘social pedagogic’ potential of classroom learning is therefore unrealized” (Blatchford, Kutnick, Baines & Galton, 2003). I had not planned whom I was going to pair the two distracting students with (let alone the rest of the class). I was lucky enough that the class were enthusiastic about the task and worked well even when given the choice to work with a friend. However the case of student A and student B is a perfect example of how not pre determining group composition can lessen the learning potential of the class (such as in the case of student B).

Blatchford, Kutnick, Baines & Galton (2003) argue that a compromise to allowing students to choose their own groups/ pairs would be to involve students in the decision making about “criteria to use when composing the groups” as well as asking students to consider the “advantages of working with peers other than their close friends”.

The next opportunity I have to implement group work, I will ensure to try out the strategy of involving students in this decision making process, as well as having my set classroom management strategies.

References

Blatchford, P., Kutnick, P., Baines, E. & Galton, M. (2003). Towards a Social Pedagogy of Classroom Group Work. London, Institution of Education, University of London