| What group sizes are best for learning? |
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Research taster
Pupils often respond well to group-work
and may seem to prefer it to other forms of learning. Their learning can improve, and
personal relationships between teachers and the class, and between pupils
within the class, can also improve, provided teachers plan group-work carefully Your evidence You may find it helpful to think about how you decide on the most appropriate type and size of grouping for some of your lessons. You could make notes using a matrix like this:
Include size and composition –e.g. ability spread, gender – of the group in the fourth column. How much coherence is there between your learning aims and organisational strategies? Moving forward Could you use your evidence to plan for different group sizes? Would it be helpful to experiment with pupils working in pairs for peer tutoring, for example, on their own for practice, in whole classes for information giving and summarising? Would it be useful to work with a colleague so that you could observe how each of you use different group sizes? Are there ways you could scale activities so that pupils begin an activity in pairs and then double up to complete an activity? Find out more
Planning and implementing group-work: The Research informed Practice website digests: The effects of cooperative learning on junior high school students during small group learning Gillies, R.M., University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/pupil_grouping/ThuAug261107362004/
How do secondary school teachers choose within-class student grouping strategies? (Original authors: Kutnick P, Blatchford P, Clark H, Macintyre H, Baines E., 2005) Original title: Teachers’ understandings of the relationship between within-class (pupil) grouping and learning in secondary schools) http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/pupil_grouping/secondary_student_grouping/
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