1. Summarize the article you chose to read in 50 words (no more, no less).
-The article I chose to read was the “I Hate Group Work!” and it was centered around group work and how to get kids to enjoy it more. It starts off by saying working in groups is an important skill and that If teachers work on “assignment design, group creation, and assessment” students can find more enjoyment in group work.
2. Reflecting on all of the readings for this week, what did you already know about collaborative learning before reading the article? What are your personal experiences in collaborative learning?
– Prior to readings I knew that collaborative learning was important and necessary to be used in the classroom setting. Also was aware that collaborative learning could be used throughout all content-area classes. I may have not known the specific and best ways to use it but overall I knew that it had a place for each content-area class. When I think back to my K-12 education I can remember doing a lot that would be considered collaborative learning. Throughout the entirety of my middle school education I was involved in project based learning. In middle school all of my content-area classes participated in this and were constantly doing projects. All of these projects were with at least one other person and it was up to the group to learn and work together to complete the project in a given time. I enjoy working with others, most of the time it makes assignments easier and more enjoyable to do. Then there are those experiences where it’s terrible to be in groups but I personally have had more good than bad experiences working collaboratively with people.
3. What do you still want to learn about collaborative learning?
– There isn’t much that really sticks out to me as far as something I really need to know in regards to collaborative learning. One thing that I still feel unsure about is assessment in collaborative learning. Granted it did discuss assessment in my readings and was helpful but certain aspects are still fuzzy to me. As a teacher you can’t see everything and individual reflections are good but I feel like they could lead the teacher astray sometimes.
Word Count- 324 words
Ryan Greene 
Hey Ryan! I actually has some differing experiences with group work; I often was the one tasked with most of the work, so I learned to mostly dislike group work because it was inconvenient to me. However, as a future educator, I see a lot of value in group work! It gets students interacting with the curriculum and with each other. With that said, I think group work shouldn’t be summative assessments because how much students have to rely on one another to get work done. Furthermore, group projects are hard to grade when you don’t introduced an individual assessment of the group project. I guess group work is really difficult to monitor effectively in most cases, what do you think?
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Group work is definitely hard to monitor and hard to be completely fair in terms of assessment. Thats why I talked about being unsure of how to effectively grade students in regards to group work.
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Hi Ryan,
I think it is awesome that your teachers gave you so many opportunities for collaborative learning! I also have mixed feelings about collaborative learning because it is almost like a different experience each time it occurs. One experience may be great where all of your classmates pull their weight and you learn a lot. As a teacher, I do not know how to ensure a great experience of collaborative learning for all of my students. Maybe include an anonymous group member assessment or a small individual assignment that counts toward the final grade? It also may be something that comes with years of experience!
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I think you’re right, it’ll be something that comes with classroom experince!
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