Chapter 15 page 385
Response Option 3. Well, let’s think
about that. Would it be best to put
your strongest reason first, or your
weakest reason, or something in the
middle?Response Option 4. Well, let’s think
about that. What kind of reason
would you want people to read first if
you really want them to come to the
desert?Å Here, the teacher wants students to think about and generate
their own explanations for whether strong or weak reasons should
go first. This seems more effective than the one above, because
the students have to do more of the work.Å In this example, the teacher gives still less help; she asks the
students to articulate for themselves what kinds of reasons should
go first. Note that if students have trouble answering this
question, she could still shift to Response 3. Thus, this response is
an excellent one because it gives the least help but still gives the
teacher the option to give more help if needed.As we have discussed, teachers should give the least possible help, leaving students to do as much of the
task on their own as they can. If Response Option 4 is sufficient to help students proceed, then there is no
need to give more specific kinds of help. And when teachers give low levels of help, and that proves to be
inadequate, they can always shift to a hint that provides more help.
Self-evaluation. Having groups evaluate their own performance along specified criteria is a powerful
instructional technique (Y. Sharan & Sharan, 1992; Webb & Farivar, 1994). Self-evaluations help students
learn the standards by which their performance can be judged. Once aware of these standards, they can
detect when their group processes or group products do not meet these standards and can take steps to
improve things. We discussed this technique in Chapter 14.
Problem 15.12 Evaluating Teaching. Self-evaluations by groups.Here is a general group evaluation form recommended by a educational website
(http://www.saskschools.ca/). Imagine a class and a topic that you are likely to teach in
the future. Based on what you have learned in this chapter, what changes would you
recommend for this evaluation form?- How did you feel about your project?
we did NOT accomplish any of our plans
a little was accomplished
most of our plans were accomplished
we accomplished all of our plans - Did everyone contribute to the project? If not, why not
- If you were to do this project again, what would you do
differently? - What would you do the same?
- What were some of the problems?
- How did you and your group deal with the problems?
- What things did you and your group do well in this project?
- What did you learn from doing this project?
Response: There are very good questions here that ask students to address problems
that they had and to think of ways of dealing with those problems in the future.