The activity is about putting the UAE’s flag colors in a pattern. There were three children in the group. I asked them to work together to put all the colored balls in a pattern.
I did this activity for two groups one group did the activity very good they cooperate and when one of them put a wrong color they were correcting for her maybe this activity worked for them because they were close friends and they accept each other’s help. On the other group one of the children was a high ability child she played the role of the teacher where she was stopping them and showing them the pattern when they put a wrong color. However, the lower ability children did not accept the high ability child to explain for them and they told her that they want to do it the way they want!
It would be better if I introduce the activity by giving each child a role. It will also will be more affective if I put a reward children who cooperate well during the activity. Children need more cooperative activities and instructions to be able to do cooperative activities independently
This will be good data for your project, considering which children work well together. Perhaps if there is too much of a differential in ability, there is less likely to be cooperation. Besides, the higher ability student was not really cooperating with the others, but telling what and how to do the task. So perhaps if you define 'cooperative' as working together, then the second group were not cooperating. I think allocating roles is a good idea, but I'm not sure they would stay with the roles for long. Anyway, it maybe that children who are friends cooperate better than those who are not. Perhaps you should mix the groups, so that the children develop cooperative abilities when they are not with friends - because surely, cooperation is a skill which needs to be learnt and so we need to cooperate with all people, not just friends. Very interesting, Marwa.
ReplyDeleteMarwa I liked the activity because it links with the National day which most of the children are talking about this time. May be you can have each child with a color and they need to find in what time they should put it. For example, if you have Ahmed, Reem and Sarah, give Ahmed the red cotton balls , Sarah the green and Reem the black and then elicit from them“ when Ahmed’s should put his cotton balls? After Reem or After Sarah?” in order to have them work cooperatively and correct for each other by saying for example, this is Rem’s turn wait then it yours and then my turn. I hope that I helped you in some way!
ReplyDeleteKeep going and I wish you the best =)
Hello there,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Dr. Niel about the use of this experience in the A.R. I also, agree with asma with the fantastic way you have combined the NationL Day theme with a numeracy lesson and I think that I'll use it if it's ok. In addition, I think that regarding your findings, friends tend to work better together but sometimes if you mixed children with the same interests even if they were not close to each other you may get good results of cooperation. I realy found your experience useful to me in matters of reflecting on your work and somewhat following the reflection cycle of A.R.
Keep up the creative work :) well done!
Good activity Marwa ...
ReplyDeleteI think it is difficult to make an age group like this work cooperatively. However, it seems that it works. for the high child I think it is better to put him with high group so you have , high, middle and low group then differentiate the activity for them so each child get the chance to develops and to learn.
keep good working 7mbo9aa
=)
Great work Marwa and I agree with Huda it's hard to make children in pre-operational stage to work collaboratively without help this is really very hard which I tried two times and it was difficult with my class. Good job
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