Week 7 Blog Post- Academic Listening and Speaking in Small Groups
Week 7 Blog Post- Academic Listening and Speaking in Small Groups
Group discussion as argued by Zwiers is an “important part of building thinking, language, and content understanding in all students” (Zwiers 135). We have learned throughout the duration of this course that for diverse learners, speaking in a large group is more often than not an impossible task. Diverse learners are not given the opportunity to speak or have an immense amount of anxiety that prevents them from being able to speak with the other individuals in their classroom. Small groups make listening and speaking much easier not only for diverse learners, but for all learners in the classroom. I think that small groups should be implemented frequently in the classroom in order to engage diverse or shy learners.
The section that I really enjoyed reading in this chapter was the section on “Techniques for Reporting Out.” Zwiers argues that “One of the most important yet underdeveloped stages of group work is the reporting out of what was learned or decided” (Zwiers 143). Although Zwiers makes a good point, I think he is forgetting the importance of the process of small group discussions. For example, students get to hear recurring themes from the other students in their groups which reinforces ideas and theories in their minds. Small group discussions also give students the opportunity to have other students challenge their ideas thereby sparking small debates. Zwiers also pointed out the numerous weaknesses of reporting out including the problem of having one person dominating group discussion or having many people in the group not paying attention because they are worried about their own reports (Zwiers 143-144). These are problems that we will all face as teacher candidates and something that we need to be aware of when we ask our students to engage in group work. I know that when I was a student, I always found it intimidating to speak out loud in class. Therefore, if another person volunteered to report out all the time, I was never able to develop skills for reporting out.
Although there are many weaknesses associated with reporting out in groups, there are some things we can do about it! Zwiers gives a couple different examples for reporting out that I think might be effective for me in the classroom. These include:
-Making sure students have enough time to prepare, then requiring them to stop preparing when a group reports out.
-Having a different topic for each group.
-Having listeners fill in a form, based on information reported out.
-Structuring a way to have audience members ask genuine questions.
-Having group members rotate such that reports are repeated and given in smaller settings. (Zwiers 144).
I thought that this chapter was really useful and had many great ideas that I hope to use in my classroom one day.