Group Work

"In mathematics what you want is to use the group to strengthen the effectiveness of what is going on inside your head. To challenge yourself and to extend what you do. Essentially at the end of the day what goes on inside your head is what matters. It is an individual world. It is a mental world. It is my mental world, I have to operate it".

Guidelines for Group Work

Mathematics instructors who have used group work in their classrooms know that carefully designed assignments and strong individual efforts by students are necessary, but not sufficient, to guarantee a successful activity. Students also need to develop the social skills that support productive mathematical work with peers. To help with this, I give my students a set of guidelines acquainting them with their rights and responsibilities during small group work

Grayson Wheatley argues that it is best to pair students of similar ability. If one student is clearly stronger mathematically, the other student will tend to defer to him or her, and the value of collaboration will be lost. Students of similar ability, on the other hand, will be able to challenge each other consistently. The teacher can provide additional challenges for pairs that finished assigned problems quickly.

One might think that certain pairs of students would then tend to dominate the presentations and discussion, but Professor Wheatley argues that this is not necessarily the case. Quite often, he says, students whom the teacher deems less able mathematically will come up with clever or original approaches to problems, and they will relish the opportunity to "trump" their allegedly smarter classmates. Just in case, however, "I try to avoid some real sharpies getting up and explaining their solution first." The other students may well assume that those students have the right answer, even when they do not.

Books

We Can Work it Out - by ATM aimed at Levels 4-5

Mathematical Team Games - by Tarquin - 1 899618 56 2 - Vivien Lucas
Each player only gets some of the information and so all must play a part in arriving at a solution. Sixteen tried and tested team games are provided in photocopiable form

Survivor

Based on the TV show, Survivor, it’s basically just a twist on collaborative learning… a FUN twist!  I’ll tell you the official rules of the game in a minute, but let me explain my motivation first…

If I just stand there and lecture, the students will get bored.  Also, as you know, math always looks easy when someone else is doing it, so they sit there and think it’s easy.  They don’t think they have to do any homework.  They fail. 

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Boys and Girls in Group Work

This paper is a report of work-in-progress on the first stage of an ethnographic study of students' experiences of collaborative learning in secondary mathematics classrooms. One aim of the study was to investigate the interaction of student gender and the social construction of mathematical competence in collaborative learning contexts. Students working in small groups on investigative activities were observed and videotaped, and key informants interviewed. One approach to analysing student-student interactions was to identify the discourses circulating in the classroom and the subject positions taken up by the students. This helped to throw light on some of the ways in which power is exercised within small groups of students working independently of the teacher.

To download the complete document in word format click here

10 Guidelines for Group Work