I have
come up with a few group work ideas which can be tailored to
suit your projects or lesson objectives:
Role Play - An example of role play that I use in
lessons is to put pupils in groups of 4 and provide 4
separate roles, such as client, designer, manufacturer
and marketer. They allocate roles to each other and have
to work as a team through the design cycle to design and
promote a product. This can go on for a number of lessons
for a large project and can even be extended to involve the
school where pupils have to promote their product and
compete with others in the class. Pupils should then
evaluate the products and work out what made them successful
or not.
Team building - This is probably the most common
form of team work seen in the classroom, whereby pupils are
given a selection of tools and materials and have to meet an
objective. Some examples of this include building the
tallest paper tower or the lightest bridge that can
hold the most weight. This is fun for pupils, however on
observation some pupils find opportunities to sit back and
let others do the work. A way of discouraging this behaviour
is to offer a prize to the winning teams and those who are
not working together will be penalised. This encourages the
dominant members of the group to allocate tasks instead of
taking over, which in effect is exactly what the objective
of group work are!
If you would like more information such as worksheets to
accompany these ideas, please email me at info@teachme-dt.com
