Module 4_Porter

Hey everybody!

The reading this week had a ton of important information! One thing that I read in chapter 9 really resonated with me because it was an issue that I had a lot in high school. It is describing a math word problem, “The student saw two numbers and the word more, so he applied the add to get more procedure. Focus on surface features often happens when students are taught to search for key words” (Woolfolk, 2019, p. 354). I have always been extremely good at math, and I knew it. So, I would go through assignments and quizzes very fast, and often overlook critical parts of the problems, which would cause me to get them wrong. Even though I knew the content, I wouldn’t read the entire problem or would see a “key word” and just breeze through it. It was very frustrating for me, but it was because I was taught to look for certain words or equations, instead of reading the entire problem before beginning to work through it. It was around junior year of high school when I finally began to slow down while taking tests and read each problem carefully, and it ended up really helping my grades. It is important to teach children to read the entire problem and take their time, it isn’t a race.

Another aspect of the reading that I really enjoyed learning about was the importance of cooperation in the classroom. Chapter 10, page 399 mentioned, “Despite some inconsistencies, the majority of the studies indicate that truly cooperative groups have positive effects-from preschool to college-on students’ empathy, tolerance for differences, feelings of acceptance, friendships, self-confidence, awareness of the perspectives of others, higher-level reasoning, problem solving, decision making, essay writing, and even school attendance” (Galton, Hargreaves, & Pell, 2009; Gillies & Boyle, 2011; Soloman, Watson, & Battistich, 2001; Zhang et al., 2016).  Growing up, I had several friends who had been home-schooled and were finally attending public school for the first time. You could tell that they didn’t have the social skills the rest of us had. When it would come to group projects, they did not really know how to interact and cooperate with others. I had never thought about it much, but now after reading this, I realize just how much of an impact cooperation has on students of all ages.

However, not all aspects of cooperation are positive. There are downsides to doing group work. Chapter 10 mentioned several negative aspects of group work, one being, “Students may simply shift dependency from the teacher to the ‘expert’ in the group; learning is passive and what is learned can be wrong” (Woolfolk, 2019, p. 401).  I have experienced this far too often. I have been in the position where it felt like everyone in my group was relying on me to do all of the work. I have also been in the position where I relied on others to do the work. If group work is being done, it should be an entire group effort, that way everyone learns the material, if you are the “expert”, you end up being overworked, and if you are one of the slackers, you end up not knowing the content. It doesn’t turn out well for anyone.

Have a great week everyone!

Steph