In Chapter Eleven we will discuss assessment in more detail, but several considerations can be addressed here.
4, For each task, you can decide if the students will receive the group grade or individual grades, and it isrecommended that you inform the students in advance. For example, you conduct a whole class discussion on a certain topic, but ask students to work in groups to complete a worksheet or write a summary of what
they have learned. In this case, you may assign one grade to the group, and all students will have thatgrade recorded next to their names. At another time you can organize aNumbered Heads Together competition and then question the students individually about what they have learned. This time each student will get an individual grade based on his or her performance. In a third
varia-tion, you might present a lesson and tell the students to study and quiz one another. They take an individual test but their scores are combined to determine a team score.
Sonie groups may have lazy or frequently absent students who, despite your efforts and those of the group members, refuse to
participate fully in the assignment. In this instance it may be unfair to punish the whole group. You should establish guide-lines if you will adjust your grading scale.
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You may want to consid,r group self-evaluations. Prepare a form with statements like these:
Everyone in the group participated.
Everyone encouraged other group members.
Everyone praised the ideas of other members.
Everyone contributed to the final product.
Everyone listened while other members spoke.
Everyone followed his or her assigned role.
Then ask students to choose a response on an evaluation scale, such as Always, Usually, Sometimes and Never. (By givingfour choices you avoid the default practice of always choosingthe middle option.)
FINAL NOTES
A GROUP CAN NEVER BECOME A COMMUNITY UNLESS IT DEVELOPS
THE HABIT OF DEEP, RESPECTFUL LISTENING TO ONE ANOTHER.
TRAINING FOR TRANSFORMATION
In this chapter, we have expanded on the information presented in Chapter Eight, which provided a rationale for pairing, and we described strategies for setting up cooperative groups and assisting them as they accept responsibility for completing assigned tasks. We have suggested various ways to group students through random, voluntary and teacher selectionand recommended regrouping
stu-dents regularly. We have provided sample group activities that are meaningful and communicative, that will motivate students to prac-tice and apply information, and that will accommodate different learning styles. We have also considered the issue of assessment to help you make decisions about group grades and individual grades.
QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF
As you start adding cooperative learning tasks to your lesson reper-toire, think about the following questions:
Did you prepare the students for small group work by planning two-step activities where they talk or work in pairsfirst and
then share ideas with a larger group or with the whole class?
Have you discussed the purpose of cooperative groups with your students?
Do you have a clear lesson objective in mind for each coopera-tive task you plan?
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Have you tried some teambuilding activities with the groups?
Did you review social behavior and group roles with your students?
Have you informed your students how they will be assessed for the group tasks?
In previous chapters, we have described different ways in which you can balance teacher-centered and learner-centeredactivities through whole class, pair, and small groups. In the next chapter, we encour-age you to give your students opportunities tobe creative and enjoy themselves as they learn independently through self-access materials.
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In a classroom in Yemen, Maria is working with a group of her stu-dents. The rest of the class is busily engaged with individual workcards that Maria has made by cutting pictures from magazines and sticking them on construction paper with True/False questions on the back.. As each student finishes, she or he checks the back of the card for the
cor-rect answers. The student then makes a note of the cardnumber, returns the card to a box at the front of the class, and takes another.
In a classroom in Tonga, David's class is busy working on a writing exercise. Two students finish early, but instead of distracting the other students, they walk to the front of the class and select activi-ties from a box kept they One begins to reconstruct a cut-up read-ing passage while the other writes a dialogue for speech balloons in a cartoon story. All the activities in the box are colorcoded so that the
students are able to select an activity at their own level. Student record cards and answer keys are enclosed in the box.
In her classroom in Thailand, Amy sets up activity centers every Wednesday. She does this by placing a box of reading activities on one desk, a writing activities box onanother, a grammar activities box on a third, and a listening/pronunciation activities box on a
fourth. In each box the activities are arranged by level. As each stu-dent completes an exercise from one of the activity centers, he or she checks the answers using the answer key in the box, puts an entry on his student record sheet, and then selectsanother activity.
Amy circulates, helping students with individual difficulties.
In all three classrooms students are engaged in independent tasks of their own choosing and are taking some measure of responsibility for their own learning. This is what independent study is all about.
IN THIS CHAPTER In this chapter, we suggest some ways in which you could use inde-pendent study in your classroom. The first half of the chapter deals with background information, such as the rationale for using inde-pendent study and issues of classroom management and materials production. The second half of the chapter provides a bank of
mate-rials and activity types that you can choose from to suit your partic-ular group of learners.
REASONS FOR USING If we were to ask Maria, David, and Amy why they use independent INDEPENDENT STUDY study, they might give a number of different answers. Maria might
say that it's a way to usefully occupy most ofthe students while she has a chance to give some extra help to a small group . David might say that he started independent study as a way of dealing with the
interruptions produced by early finishers; while Amy might say that
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179her learners are all at different levels and in need of different skills, and that independent study seems to be the only way to address their individual needs.
In fact, independent study can do all these things and more. It can also help to solve the problem of a limited number of textbooks. And it provides students with the study skills necessary to continue learn-ing beyond the classroom. This last point is very important if the students are receiving only minimal English instruction in school.