Reading Reflection 4 - Groupwork Chp. 4-5

Creating the Task

One of my biggest questions after reading chapters 1-3 of Designing Groupwork was “What does well designed groupwork look like?” In Chapter 4, Cohen provides an outline of how to create groupwork tasks that are effective. In creating group-oriented tasks, teachers must first decide what it is they want students to gain from the experience. If the goal is conceptual, the task needs to be designed as a “multiple ability task.” Multiple ability tasks have more than one answer or process for solving the problem, are both intrinsically interesting and rewarding, allow for different contributions from different students, involve multimedia and various senses (sight, sound, touch), require a variety of skills and behaviors – including reading and writing skills, and are challenging (Page 68).

In order to design effective groupwork, all of these criteria must be considered as contributing factors. If there is only one right answer, limited skills are needed, and the task is not challenging, the groupwork will become ineffective as a teaching strategy and issues of status and hierarchical struggles are more likely to emerge, resulting in unequal distribution of work within the group. It is also important to consider the difficulty level of the concept(s) being covered. If it is a more difficult concept or group of concepts, it may be more effective to design a variety tasks, rather than one single task.

Within my discipline this is incredibly important to consider. Some concepts may be less challenging and can be covered by a single task, like smaller grammatical concepts. However, larger concepts, like the use of voice in writing or questions of theme in literature can be more difficult to grasp and may require multiple visits and tasks in order for students to gain a legitimate understanding. As an English teacher, I think my biggest challenge here is determining which concepts to develop multiple tasks for. As each set of students may struggle with different concepts, I will always need to reflect and adapt according to what my students find challenging. The challenge is balance, the key is flexibility.