One of the strategies that I used while working in groups is the attribution of roles. This strategy is based on giving a different role to each member of the group, for example: technician, master materials, secretary, director… Is very important to give a role card to each member to let them know what they are in charge of. What is more, everyday needs to be stated which is the aim or task established for each role.
From my experience group roles worked really well, and some of the benefits that I could observe through its application are:
2. Secondly, all students became indispensable in the group, as they are responsible of something in particular, that it is necessary to be able to create the final product. Pupils feel this responsibility and that make them to be more encouraged and give all they can to the work proposed.
3. Thirdly and the last point, is the possibility of creating expert groups.The experts groups allow pupils to feel valued as they are considered experts on something and also, they can support each other sharing doubts and trying to solve it among them.
One of the things that I am going to change in my future lessons is the assessment through rubrics. In fact what I am giong to change is not the rubrics itself but the complexity of them.
Usually rubrics require lots of writing, in the sense that in each level needs to be written what is demanded. Even though you can write the information in a simple way and with a few words, students do not use to read everything. So maybe, it could be good to do the assessment during two or three sessions with all the class. In that way, you ensure that all students read, understand and give a more fair grade.
The second element that I observed and I would do it differently is the percentage given to the grades that students decide, as some of the students were not objective or fair with their mates neither with himself or herself. From my point point of view, is really difficult to control this.
In order to change a little bit this situation, I decided to add a new section below the rubric which is called comments. In that way, I could understand a little bit better why students graded their mates. Nevertheless, with the comment section added, a few students were able to cheat too. Therefore, I have been forced to change my percentages, instead of giving to students grades more value than mines, I lowered them to be both in the same level.