Group Work

I have really enjoyed the fresh perspectives from the videos in this class.  I wanted to share my experiences with group work with music classes and also in technology classes.  My favorite way to assign groups is to choose students randomly, either by numbering off or pulling names out of a jar.  I have had great success with this method in music classes because it puts students together that may not work together very often.  One of the issues I've had with this method of assigning groups is that occasionally I will get a group of students that do not work together well.  This is where the discussion in the video changed my thinking on the value of Student Choice.  I tried this with my elementary music classes during the last week of school and had great results!  The assignment was to compose a song to accompany the reading of a poem - using the descriptive words in the poem as inspiration for the instruments the groups chose to create the music.  Students chose their groups and one of three poems.  The level of cooperation and creativity was awesome, and the results were incredible.  I will definitely implement the student choice of groups in my teaching more in all my classes.
#MFLearn19

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