School Placement 3
Name:Shaun McGee
Date: 17/11/17
OBSERVATION
In this placement I observed the
Junior and Senior infant classes
working together in groups. Four
different stations were lay out
around the classroom with a
different teacher at each station.
The students were split into
groups and spent 5 minutes at
each station playing various
different educational games.
Bibliography
(Research on Group Work in Education, Chiriac, Hammar, 2011)
(Granstorm, 2006)
2017/18
Class Observed: Junior and Senior Infants
Topic: Working in Groups
CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THE OBSERVATION
Working in groups is very important for both
primary and secondary school students. Group work
helps the students to interact with each other and
improve their learning and people skills. Research
that has been carried out about student's active
working modes in a school setting suggests that
these working models are introduced under many
conceptions such as group work and cooperative
learning groups.(Chiriac,Hammar, 2011)
The quality of learning from group work is different
to that from traditional teaching in the classroom.
(Granstrm, 2006) argues that there is a resistance
among teachers to make use of group work and that
the reason for this could be that these types of
classroom activities may cause unfamiliar processes
out of the teachers control.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this teaching
method in the classroom. I was assigned to one of
the stations and I observed the students interacting
with each other and helping one another through
the games. I noticed the senior infant students were
mixed in amongst the junior infants so that they
could pass on their knowledge to the younger
students. I believe this is a very effect form of
learning and it is unfortunate that it is not used
more often by teachers.