[Music] the benefits are many there's um evidence that that being in a group and interacting with people who might be different from you uh who might have other ideas um actually contributes to the development of higher intellectual skills you develop the language actually because group work you have to talk my study actually shows that I did a big study on that that there is very serious language development uh in group work and also content development because you're faced with much more with with issues and problems that are much closer to real life than you know
something that you respond to in a book but I think that most importantly the benefits are for what we contribute as schools to producing more capable more social uh deeper thinking people [Music] first and foremost I think when you have a round table or a table and you just tell the kids to sit around the table but basically they still keep doing that individual kind of work right and um I do question number five what's the answer and you tell me 67 and I write 67 and they call that group work that's a huge mistake
for me for me and and my goal basically in building Democratic classrooms is to make sure that the participation of the kids in the groups is Equitable that there isn't someone who dominates the group and someone who's cut out from the interaction in the group what the teachers I think need to to figure out is how to take the opportunity to address the issues of unequal participation and that we also model as teachers we model the kind of language the kind of um ways of interacting that we expect the students to interact I I would
say um instead of how do we deal with the heterogen I would say how do we benefit from the heterogen How would how do we take advantage of the richness that the kid all these different kids bring to the classroom and if we're able to do that if we're able to recognize um the word that they use a lot is the assets right so everybody brings an asset uh then I think we're better off so looking at the kid for what they can do rather they what they cannot do that's how we get the benefit
of [Music] heterogeneity I still think that sometimes teachers have to lecture there's information that they have to give uh my advice is not to lecture more than 15 minutes maximum maximum maximum and if you lecture for 15 minutes not to have more than four slides in the PowerPoint uh and not to read the PowerPoint uh but to have images but what the teacher does when the kids are in group work number one the very important thing that that the teacher does is she prepares the task okay she she has to really think about what is
a task that really needs a group and then to observe the kids a lot to look around and give constant constant constant feedback you asked a great question you performed Your Role really well oh wow that's a real strong contribution to the task this group is amazing look at their product okay so feedback feedback feedback feedback [Music] well um it's it's not easy it's not a magic pill it takes time it takes a lot of effort um it actually like with the students it takes the teachers to try things to be observed and to be
given feedback try thing again get an observations from a mentor from somebody from a colleague and try again and it's a learning process it's a learning process it does not happen overnight although everybody would love it for it to happen overnight I get frustrated when I hear that teachers are being blamed for all the problems right um I think that teachers they do the best they can under very difficult conditions for very little money and that's true in the US that's true in Brazil it's not true in Finland and it's not true in Singapore but
hey we're here so um what I'm saying is that what we need to do is not fix the individual teacher but we have to enrich their repertoire we have to give them more tools we have to treat them as professionals and share with them the knowledge base because there is a serious knowledge base you know that has good theoretical work and empirical evidence for what works so let's not give the teachers recipes but enrich them you know teach them [Music]
