psychology Assessment week 7

1. In elementary school I remember being grouped randomly to create a presentation on animals who's habitat is in the mountains. We each worked brainstormed about each animal and then we all helped to draw the animals and display them. I believe we each then presented on a specific animal. In college I remember being randomly grouped into study groups for a research paper in biology 100. We all contributed to the research and met together to compile the paper. We also took tests together so we relied on everyone's knowledge of the subjects.
2. I definitely think cooperative groups encourage learning. I remember from my past experiences that it helped me to learn new concepts that I might not have been able to figure out on my own. Having others in the group to help me understand material really helped me learn. For this reason I think cooperative groups would be beneficial for student's learning.
3. Instructional conversations have all students participate by adding input and conversing. The teacher and students will converse about a text, it appears as a normal conversation but the conversation has direction and goals. Everyone discusses the text. Reciprocal questioning however helps to reinforce new concepts. Students may each understand the new concepts differently so they would discuss each new concept and share their insights and understanding. Each student would questions and then everyone in the group would ask their questions and allow others to respond to them.
4. One example of a situation you would want to use ability grouping is in guided reading groups. It would be a good idea to group students of the same reading level so that you can have them focus on certain books as a group and scaffold their learning as a group without having to worry about moving too fast for one child or too slow for another. Mixed grouping would be a good idea when students are working on a presentation or some sort of research. I think this would be a good idea because students could contribute regardless of their abilities, especially if they were assigned specific tasks. It would also encourage learning for the students on lower levels as they could learn from and get feedback from more confident peers.