Building learning groups

The content and tasks you set students are not all that need to be considered in planning a class. How will you manage the students? You could try varying your teaching approaches: try small group work, direct instruction, whole class discussion, individual work and pair work. Always have an objective for the tasks you set students.

• How will you decide when to use a particular approach?
• How are you going to put students in groups/pairs?
• Will you allow students to select their own groups or will you assign them to a group?
• How will you gain students’ attention?

It takes two to build a successful teaching/learning relationship so you’ll need to think about how students learn and how you can use this knowledge to engage your students. You want to make your time with your students relaxed and productive so that they will look forward to working with you again.

Establishing Good Communication

These are some actions you can take that will help ensure that the communication between you is effective.

• Learn the students’ names and set times that they can come and discuss work with you.

• Be prepared for each session and be on time: expect the same of your students
• Make the objectives of the session explicit: tell students what you expect them to be able to do or demonstrate understanding of by the end of the session.
• Introduce concepts and terms that students may not know: better still, get students to work in groups to figure out meanings
• Be enthusiastic about your work
• Respect your students by encouraging them: don’t criticise them and use mistakes as a learning opportunity

‘I liked the way you…’ ‘That’s a good idea. Have you thought how it could be used…?’ ‘Can you think of an alternative approach?’

• Listen carefully
• Talk less then your students
• Explain what you are doing and why
• Encourage your students to ask questions
• Be honest if you don’t know something. You can say

‘I’m not sure about that. Can I get back to you next week?’   or ‘I need some time to think about that one’. You can challenge the students to try themselves. ‘I’m not sure about that but why don’t you try … and then let me know how you go’.

Acting Ethically

• Treat personal information as confidential
• Avoid making judgements about the person: be friendly and open-minded
• Avoid taking on the personal problems of the students
• Make it clear, from day one,  that you are helping  students to achieve their learning goals, not doing their assignments for them
• Build a relationship of trust: don’t make a promise you can’t keep
• Avoid rescheduling sessions
• Direct students to appropriate resources if you can’t help them yourself

Additional resource

Effective Group Work resource from the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash provides hints for working in teams and for successful cross-cultural teams.

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