Educators have found that the whole class activity is particularly useful for starting a new topic and for reviewing and sharing of children’s work and experiences.
According to the UNICEF document called “Happy Learning”, whole class activity has two main advantages. It allows for quick transfer of information to a large number of children and it enables everyone to be engaged in the same activity at once. It also provides a socializing function, offering safe context in which children can share an experience with others and present individual ideas to a supportive audience.
But all of us know well that in every classroom children have diverse learning abilities and paces of learning. This diversity of children can only be addressed well with group activities, which are also valuable methods of engaging students in meaningful learning.
Furthermore, as per the document, the combination of personalized and small group learning ensures that children learn on their own, with guidance and task related feedback from the teacher, as well peers. Small group work is essential for developing both cognitive and social skills through co-operation and sharing. The teacher can choose to have each of the groups working on the same activity, or they may have the small groups work on different topics at the same time. The teacher rotates around each group, spending more time in the groups, which require greater support.
The document says that the small groups can be of same ability or mixed ability. Ability grouping consist of individuals at the same developmental stage of learning. They are given work to match their ability. In fact, working with mixed groups, teachers can provide highly individualized attention to children with varied strengths and interests. However, group membership should be flexible, changing periodically to provide varied work interactions
Note: The write-up of the blogger has been reproduced since the the citizen journalism site in which it earlier had appeared has been closed down
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