Reflections on Academic Listening and Speaking in Small Groups
For my inquiry class this week, each student must bring 3-4 significant objects for a class activity. For our activity, we must divide ourselves into groups of 2-3 students and interview another person on their objects. Each interviewer’s task is to ask questions that explore their classmate’s thoughts and beliefs about education, with the ultimate goal of interpreting their partner’s teaching philosophy.
In our LLED360 reading this week there is a section where Zwiers emphasizes how important it is for teachers to focus more on the process of group work activities, rather than the product (139). This idea resonated with me because it reminded me of my own interpretation of one of my significant objects, and how it relates to my thoughts on education. One of my objects is a Polaroid camera that was given to me on my 21st birthday from a group of my closest friends. I love taking pictures because it helps to capture past memories of my life. I have always believed that the journey is more important than the destination, and I can relate this to one of my views on education. As important as it is for teachers to focus on getting their students to learn a prescribed outcome, I believe it is more important for them to focus the bulk of their time in planning and executing different fun and engaging ways that will help their students to learn the content.
For example, the most prominent memories of my vertebrate structure and function course consisted of everything I learned during the fascinating lab dissections I got to do. Having to compare and contrast the different forms and functions of different vertebrate classes was easier to accomplish when my lab partners and I got to work together and share our ideas on why certain traits evolved in different groups and how these traits may help a particular group survive. Not only did I learn course content through these lab activities, but I also learned how to respect my group members by providing appropriate academic responses to what they said (especially when I disagree with them). When I look back on this course, my group work in labs definitely stood out more than my memories of sifting through endless pages of lecture notes.