DEMO: Teaching the 21st Century Student

5 Student autonomy and an atmosphere of trust are crucial for this activity. The teacher stresses that the process is the important part. There will not be assessment on answers. In fact, if a student has no prior knowledge about a story, they are encouraged to make inferenc- es based on morphology, phonetic resemblance, or associations. 6 When posters return to the original groups, students prepare a short presentation. They review, assess, and evaluate, then decide for the best solution, summarize, and discuss it with the class. To achieve high learning and efficiency with this method, the recommend- ed number of groups and tasks is maximally 5. An ideal constellation of groups are dialogue in pairs or triples (Ch. 1.1.1), larger groups may make the activity too time consuming, tedious, and less effective. Teams of the situation adjusted size in the form of buzz groups (Ch. 1.3.1) or opinion groups (Ch. 1.3.2) are also an option.

Explain to your students that this technique works on the principle that “two heads are better than one”. Encourage them to adopt this approach when studying or brainstorming in other contexts; have them ask their friends or peers what they know, think, would do, or experience about the issue.

TEACHER TIP

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