Opinion on 'sets' or 'streaming' in Secondary School

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Reply 120

Johansmith

Hi,
Thanks for sharing nice views. I liked sets much but now a does not remember much about it.

Reply 121

PaperclipBadger

Original post by llys

Apparently "group work" is the holy grail. :erm:

There is some truth to that. It's far more useful to be able to work efficiently in a team than it is to exceed entirely on your own, and you can accomplish a lot more in a group. Personal computer based learning needs to be interspersed with group discussion and projects in order to be effective.

Reply 122

Emma122

I don't know really there are benefits and negatives of each, although the whole science GCSE annoys me because if you are on foundation you are automatically stopped from getting higher than a C in your exams.

Although I think sets are necessary to some extent because if you have mixed ability some students will not reach their potential and some might fall behind depending on what level you work at. there should be better ways of deciding what sets students should be in.

Reply 123

llys

Original post by PaperclipBadger

I agree completely, actually.

The problem I have with "group work" at school is that pupils are never taught how to "work efficiently in a team". So, often, one or two pupils in the group do all the work while the others chat and do and learn nothing. This version of "group work" is much less effective than individual work, because at least with individual work every pupil must do the work and will learn something in the process.

However, that is the bad version of group work. There is good group work. Group work should be organised like in a real workplace, where each person in a group takes responsibility for a task. In the workplace this happens naturally, because the whole work would be too much for one person. (In schools, this is never the case - one smart person can usually do the whole thing and will probably end up doing so out of frustration with the other group members.) In good group work, each person has responsibility for a task and must complete this task in a way that integrates with other people's tasks. That involves frequent discussion but in addition to team spirit and effective communication, the individual responsibility of each group member is the most important thing for the group to be successful.

I would be all for group work like that in schools. I also think there are subjects which lend themselves naturally to it. (Large D&T, Computing, Media projects, for example. Theatre productions, orchestra and team sports work on the same principle. In principle, there's no reason why this way of group work should not work in an academic context in the classroom as well, so long as that context lends itself to group work.)

And to make sure that pupils learn how to work well in a group, I would assess both the final work and the individual contributions and make each pupil's "team" grade dependent on the contribution of the other group members. For example, grade the individual contributions 0-10 and then multiply the marks - if one group member contributes nothing, the mark for the whole "team" is zero. Very harsh, but I think it would eventually have the desired effect. :tongue: