TI-AIE: Community approaches: science education and environmental issues

Group discussions

Small group discussions can result in high levels of participation. Group talk is important because it helps students to learn to reason. Learning to reason requires the ability to use the ideas and language of science to begin to construct arguments that link evidence and data to ideas and theories. Effective small group discussion requires students to justify the reasons for their beliefs.

But you need to plan effective group discussion. You need to be very clear about what you want students to discuss and what the outcome of their work is going to be. You will need to provide them with some prompts to get them going, and give them a sense of purpose.

The benefits of groupwork

Groupwork can be a very effective way of motivating your students to learn by encouraging them to think, communicate, exchange ideas and thoughts, and make decisions. Your students can both teach and learn from others: a powerful and active form of learning.

Groupwork is more than students sitting in groups; it involves working on and contributing to a shared learning task with a clear objective. You need to be clear about why you are using groupwork for learning and know why this is preferable to lecturing, pair work or to students working on their own. Thus groupwork has to be well-planned and purposeful.

Planning groupwork

When and how you use groupwork will depend on what learning you want to achieve by the end of the lesson. You can include groupwork at the start, the end or midway through the lesson, but you will need to allow enough time. You will need to think about the task that you want your students to complete and the best way to organise the groups.

As a teacher, you can ensure that groupwork is successful if you plan in advance:

• the goals and expected outcomes of the group activity
• the time allocated to the activity, including any feedback or summary task
• how to split the groups (how many groups, how many students in each group, criteria for groups)
• how to organise the groups (role of different group members, time required, materials, recording and reporting)
• how any assessment will be undertaken and recorded (take care to distinguish individual assessments from group assessments)
• how you will monitor the groups’ activities.

Groupwork tasks

The task that you ask your students to complete depends on what you what them to learn. By taking part in groupwork, they will learn skills such as listening to each other, explaining their ideas and working cooperatively. However, the main aim is for them to learn something about the subject that you are teaching. Some examples of tasks could include the following:

• Presentations: Students work in groups to prepare a presentation for the rest of the class. This works best if each group has a different aspect of the topic, so they are motivated to listen to each other rather than listening to the same topic several times. Be very strict about the time that each group has to present and decide on a set of criteria for a good presentation. Write these on the board before the lesson. Students can the use the criteria to plan their presentation and assess each other’s work. The criteria could include:
  • Was the presentation clear?
  • Was the presentation well-structured?
  • Did I learn something from the presentation?
  • Did the presentation make me think?
• Problem solving: Students work in groups to solve a problem or a series of problems. This could include conducting an experiment in science, solving problems in mathematics, analysing a story or poem in English, or analysing evidence in history.
• Creating an artefact or product: Students work in groups to develop a story, a piece of drama, a piece of music, a model to explain a concept, a news report on an issue or a poster to summarise information or explain a concept. Giving groups five minutes at the start of a new topic to create a brainstorm or mind map will tell you a great deal about what they already know, and will help you pitch the lesson at an appropriate level.
• Differentiated tasks: Groupwork is an opportunity to allow students of different ages or attainment levels to work together on an appropriate task. Higher attainers can benefit from the opportunity to explain the work, whereas lower attainers may find it easier to ask questions in a group than in a class, and will learn from their classmates.
• Discussion: Students consider an issue and come to a conclusion. This may require quite a bit of preparation on your part in order to make sure that the students have enough knowledge to consider different options, but organising a discussion or debate can be very rewarding for both you and them.

Organising groups

Groups of four to eight are ideal but this will depend on the size of your class, the physical environment and furniture, and the attainment and age range of your class. Ideally everyone in a group needs to see each other, talk without shouting and contribute to the group’s outcome.

• Decide how and why you will divide students into groups; for example, you may divide groups by friendship, interest or by similar or mixed attainment. Experiment with different ways and review what works best with each class.
• Plan any roles you will give to group members (for example, note taker, spokesperson, time keeper or collector of equipment), and how you will make this clear.

Managing groupwork

You can set up routines and rules to manage good groupwork. When you use groupwork regularly, students will know what you expect and find it enjoyable. Initially it is a good idea to work with your class to identify the benefits of working together in teams and groups. You should discuss what makes good groupwork behaviour and possibly generate a list of ‘rules’ that might be displayed; for example, ‘Respect for each other’, ‘Listening’, ‘Helping each other’, ‘Trying more than one idea’, etc.

It is important to give clear verbal instructions about the groupwork that can also be written on the blackboard for reference. You need to:

• direct your students to the groups they will work in according to your plan, perhaps designating areas in the classroom where they will work or giving instructions about moving any furniture or school bags
• be very clear about the task and write it on the board in short instructions or pictures. Allow your students to ask questions before you start.

During the lesson, move around to observe and check how the groups are doing. Offer advice where needed if they are deviating from the task or getting stuck.

You might want to change the groups during the task. Here are two techniques to try when you are feeling confident about groupwork – they are particularly helpful when managing a large class:

• ‘Expert groups’: Give each group a different task, such as researching one way of generating electricity or developing a character for a drama. After a suitable time, re-organise the groups so that each new group is made up of one ‘expert’ from all the original groups. Then give them a task that involves collating knowledge from all the experts, such as deciding on what sort of power station to build or preparing a piece of drama.
• ‘Envoys’: If the task involves creating something or solving a problem, after a while, ask each group to send an envoy to another group. They could compare ideas or solutions to the problem and then report back to their own group. In this way, groups can learn from each other.

At the end of the task, summarise what has been learnt and correct any misunderstandings that you have seen. You may want to hear feedback from each group, or ask just one or two groups who you think have some good ideas. Keep students’ reporting brief and encourage them to offer feedback on work from other groups by identifying what has been done well, what was interesting and what might be developed further.

Even if you want to adopt groupwork in your classroom, you may at times find it difficult to organise because some students:

• are resistant to active learning and do not engage
• are dominant
• do not participate due to poor interpersonal skills or lack of confidence.

To become effective at managing groupwork it is important to reflect on all the above points, in addition to considering how far the learning outcomes were met and how well your students responded (did they all benefit?). Consider and carefully plan any adjustments you might make to the group task, resources, timings or composition of the groups.

Research suggests that learning in groups need not be used all the time to have positive effects on student achievement, so you should not feel obliged to use it in every lesson. You might want to consider using groupwork as a supplemental technique, for example as a break between a topic change or a jump-start for class discussion. It can also be used as an ice-breaker or to introduce experiential learning activities and problem solving exercises into the classroom, or to review topics.

Improvement in food resources

Ask each group to think of all the ways in which we can improve crop yields. You could give them this question in advance for homework and, if you live in a rural community, ask them to talk to their relatives and friends in order to find out what people do to improve the crop yield on their land. If you live in a city, encourage the students to call any relatives they have who live in rural areas, or to go to the market and ask the people selling produce what they do to improve the crop yield.

Issues they could discuss include the following:

• Should we use chemical fertilisers on the soil? What problems can fertilisers cause?
• Pesticides are essential for growing healthy crops. The fact that they can harm wildlife is unfortunate, but not important.
• Given that there is unemployment and malnutrition in India, should our priority be to build houses and factories or to grow more crops?

Managing the garbage we produce

Conduct a brainstorm of all the sources of garbage we produce. This might include things from the home, sewage, factory waste, litter, etc. Write all the ideas on the blackboard. If possible collect some pictures that you could pass round to generate ideas.

Divide your students into groups and ask each group to come up with three ways to reduce the amount of garbage we produce as a society. If they have more than three suggestions, ask them to try and agree the three best ones. They might come up with things like:

• building a recycling plant so people are encouraged to recycle rather than just throw things away
• making plastic bags and cups much more expensive than paper ones
• making investment in sewage systems a priority
• increasing taxes to pay for garbage collectors to work in the cities.

Then ask each group to give their three suggestions. Finally, your students could vote on the one suggestion that they think would make the greatest difference to society as a whole.

Sources of energy

This will take two lessons.

Split your students into groups of five, ten or 15. Give each group one method of generating electricity to research one of the following:

• burning coal
• solar energy
• wind power
• nuclear power
• biomass.

Give them one lesson to research this method for generating electricity. They should make notes on:

• how the method works
• the advantages of this method
• the disadvantages of this method.

There will be some information in their textbook. You could also get some more books from the library or give them hints on searching the internet, and encourage them to look in books they might have at home.

In the next lesson, pose the problem that a new power station is to be built in your community. Which type should it be?

Divide your students into groups of five – but this time, make sure that each group contains one ‘expert’ on each method of generating electricity.

Ask each group to decide on which sort of power station to build in your community.