The most important key ability of young people is:

Solve important problems,

Say hello to questions,

Create interesting works,

And the ability to cooperate with peers.

~ howard gardner

Getting several students together to form a study group is a teaching strategy that many teachers will adopt. It makes students have more opportunities to participate in classroom activities, and relatively reduces the time for teachers to lead and control the whole teaching, that is, less lectures, more discussion and practice.

However, do the group activities in the classroom achieve the goal that the teacher wants to achieve?

Before discussing this issue, we must first make clear the form of group activities. First of all, we must establish that group activities are not the same as cooperative learning. Cooperative learning must be in the form of a group, but not necessarily the other way around.

There are three forms of group activities: discussion, dialogue and cooperation. Each form has its own application opportunity and teaching objectives, and of course it also has its own emphasis on operation.

This is the most common form of group activities, but it is also the most common classroom scene with nothing but no substantive content. A common teaching misunderstanding pointed out in the article "Common Mistakes in Classroom Teaching", that is, group activities for grouping, often appear in group discussions.

There is no strict limit to the number of people in group discussion, even or odd numbers are acceptable. It is suitable for the teacher to ask a topic or question, and each member of the group will explain his "answer" personally. Brainstorming is common in such activities.

When teachers discuss in groups, they often ask the group to form a final conclusion or answer. Therefore, each group must appoint a classmate to take notes, and the students in charge of taking notes must truly write down the main points published by each member, and finally the whole group will produce its own conclusions based on this record. After each group has reached a conclusion, they should report the discussion results to the whole class and communicate with each other.

Basically, group discussion is often used to replace the teacher's question and answer activities in class. The purpose is to let all students participate in the process of thinking and publishing questions, and teachers will get shorter answers when they ask questions. Because everyone has to explain their ideas in the process, the final discussion results are usually different.

In the implementation of group discussion, teachers must pay attention to the following three points to ensure that the discussion activities truly achieve the expected goals;

① Everyone participates: In group activities, it is often seen that one or two students are always excluded from the group. Generally, they are naughty students in the class or students with poor grades. When implementing group discussion, teachers must pay special attention to these students and ensure that everyone in the group must participate and express their ideas. The TPS method and the four-headed method introduced in the article "Several Useful Cooperative Learning Methods" allow every student to participate in group discussions and express his own views through the design of operation mechanism.

(2) Everyone can say the conclusion: all members of the group have made an announcement, and then the consensus reached through discussion must be clearly received by everyone, that is, everyone should be able to say the conclusion of the group, not just the team leader or specific members can grasp the final result of the discussion. In order to achieve this goal, the group report after discussion can be randomly distributed, and the group does not designate its own representative to make the report. For example, number the group members, and then randomly select the number of students in each group as speakers.

③ Group summary: After each group draws a conclusion, it must report to the whole class to form collective wisdom. When writing a group summary, some props can be used to visually present personal ideas and conclusions drawn by the group, which is also a means to ensure that everyone can participate in group discussion activities. For example, let everyone write their thoughts on a piece of paper, and stick all the paper together during the discussion so that everyone can see the contents of each paper. After the discussion, mark the words that everyone agrees to be the conclusion of the group on the pasted paper, then shoot the pasted group notes with video kiosks or mobile phones and upload them to the teacher's electronic whiteboard.

The difference between dialogue and discussion is that dialogue is an in-depth conversation on a question by all participants. Focused and deep, it is suitable for teaching activities aimed at in-depth exploration of concepts. In the "553 Smart Classroom Teaching Mode" introduced in the article "Learning from the School-based Teaching Mode of Successful Schools", in the choice of teaching strategies made by teachers according to the data obtained from students' feedback, group learning must be conducted in a dialogue way. Each student in the group explained to the other members why he chose this answer. Because everyone is explaining the same question, the listener can compare his own ideas with those of the interpreter to form a meaningful dialogue, which will turn into a deep exchange of ideas.

Group dialogue, like group discussion, must pay attention to everyone's participation, everyone's ability to make conclusions and group summary, in order to make the dialogue effective.

Group cooperation includes hands-on practice, and teachers assign tasks or problems to be completed by groups, such as an experiment, solving a math problem and writing reports. This task contains many details and must be completed by all members of the team. Before solving the problem, the team should first analyze the work connotation, divide the work details, assign the work shared by everyone, plan the work flow, and then implement it according to the plan. In the process of implementation, everyone must do their own work and coordinate the work of the team members. For example, to carry out a scientific experiment, someone needs to be responsible for operating the experimental equipment, recording the experimental data, monitoring the experimental process, testing the experimental accuracy, and finally processing the experimental data and writing the experimental report.

When a group carries out division of labor, the teacher can provide appropriate help, or reach an agreement with the whole class on the principle of division of labor to avoid conflicts among members because of uneven division of labor. In cooperation, teachers should observe the integration of group work after division and give guidance when necessary.

When carrying out group activities in class, teachers often use scoreboards to record the performance of each group in the activities. After the activity, the teacher will praise the group with better performance according to the record. However, it is often seen that when students raise their hands or are drawn by the teacher to answer questions, if the students answer well, the teacher will give extra points to the group to which the students belong. The problem is that it is controversial whether individual performance and group performance can be equated unless there is an agreement in advance. Sometimes adding and subtracting marks is accompanied by teachers' free evaluation of evidence, which causes students to protest. So the teacher should work with the whole class to make rules for adding and subtracting scoreboards. These rules can include the performance of activities and add items related to the daily management of the classroom. As long as the rules are clear and everyone has guidelines to follow, it will achieve the expected results when used.

A good group activity can not only help students acquire subject knowledge, but also cultivate the ability of cooperation, communication and coordination with others, which is of great help to help teachers take care of more students. However, in carrying out this kind of teaching activities, teachers should be clear about the objectives and pay attention to the relevant details in order to achieve better teaching results.