Chapter 15 page 384
Response. One immediate problem with the roles is that the roles appear likely to foster
unequal participation. The artist, for instance, might think that his role is do nothing
until the end, when the rest of the group will hand him their plans, and he will create the
final artwork. In addition, with older students, it may be more appropriate to develop
cognitive roles that focus more on the cognitive strategies that Ms. Rodriguez would like
to promote. The audience checker role is the only role that is clearly a cognitive role; it is
a cognitive role because it directs group members to use the strategy of considering the
audience. Other possible cognitive roles that Ms. Rodriguez might consider are a
“brainstormer” (who would encourage the group to think of as many ideas as possible
before deciding which ones are the best) or an “organizer” (who encourages the group
to think about how best to organize their ideas in the brochure). You should be able to
think of other roles focused on cognitive strategies needed to compose a travel
brochure.
A problem with the role card is that it defines the role but lacks model questions that
the student might ask. These questions help students understand the targeted strategies
better, and it reminds students that the audience checker is not the only one who is
supposed to take the audience into consideration. The audience checker is supposed to
make sure that the whole group is taking the audience into consideration. In addition,
the teacher should consider having the class help her generate good questions for each
role, rather than writing the questions herself.Hints. Hints are scaffolds that are provided when a student is having some difficulty. Hints can be
provided by a teacher or by a computer. For example, there are computer-based learning environments can
provide these hints on demand when students click on a “hint” button (Linn, Davis, & Bell, 2004b).
Teachers can provide hints to students in groups. When students are working on challenging, complex
tasks, they will sometimes need hints from the teacher to get through difficulties they are having.
As we discussed in Chapter 14, it is important that when teachers given hints, they should give no
more information than students need to proceed on their own. Consider an example in which a teacher has
asked second graders to collaborate in pairs to write a travel brochure to entice tourists to a desert habitat.
Students first brainstorm, generating a lit of reasons to visit the desert. Then they compose their brochure
and add the appropriate art work. As the teacher is walking around the room, she notices that one pair of
students has generated a list of several reasons to visit the desert, but they are having difficulty deciding
which reason to put first on their brochure. The students ask her for help. How should the teacher respond?
Consider these possible options for responses by the teacher:
Response Option 1. Well, I would say
that your strongest reason to attract
tourists is the idea that the desert is
beautiful. So why don’t you put that
first?Response Option 2. It might be a good
idea to put your strongest reason
first. Which do you think is your
strongest reason?Å This is terminal help. The teacher provides the answer. This is
unlikely to help the students as much as other alternatives below.Å Here, the teacher has provided a criterion for how to pick what to
put first (“your strongest reason”) but leaves the rest of the work
for the students. The teacher has helped students move forward
but has not entirely done the task for them. Still, it seems likely
that she could have tried letting students do a little more of the
thinking than she allowed them to do here.