Pair and Group Work

The focus in this module is on Pair and Group Work. Pair and Group Work incorporates principles and themes from the Cooperative Learning and Collaborative Learning theoretical frameworks.

Module Focus: Introduction, Rationale

Some reasons for using pair and group work are…

• To accommodate individual differences and learning styles.
• To provide opportunities for different types of cognitive involvement.
• To allow for unexpected learning.
• And, to motivate learners and increase time‐on‐task by using a variety of engaging and interesting activities.

In observing or teaching a class, there are some questions that help a teacher determine what kind of activity will do done. The questions are…

• How is the class organized?
• How are the pairs and/or groups organized?
• What kinds of interactions occur between the groups and teacher, and within the groups themselves?
• What is the role of the teacher? The students?
• What kind of group management techniques do you
• What is the purpose of using group work in this case?

There are some advantages of knowing how to group students, they are:

• Teachers can form pairs and groups in different ways.
• Students work together toward common instructional goals.
• Students actively use English to complete the tasks.
• And, they have fun while they were doing it!

Module Focus: Summary

The focus in Module 4 has been on Pair and Group Work. Having completed some critical analysis of other teachers’ classes, you can now begin to make decisions about which of these features you can transfer to your own classroom. As with other techniques and practices in this video series, you can think about starting with small experimental changes over time (rather than making lots of big changes all at one time).

to download the checklist for this stage, click the following link: Pair and Group Work.

This information is taken from "Shaping the Way We Teach English" module 4.