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Group Work is Hard Work with Kora Moore
42 Plays1 year ago
Group work can be difficult no matter the grade. Kora shares what she’s found useful when it comes to growing successful student groups in her class. This episode is particularly short, but we only have two more episodes with Kora!
Kora Moore teaches 6th, 7th, and 8th grade ELA at Lighthouse Middle School in Coos Bay Oregon. This is her second year leading a journalistic learning project in her classroom across the three grades she teaches.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Journalistic Learning Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to the Journalistic Learning Podcast, where we talk with educators who are leading journalistic learning projects in their classrooms.
00:00:20
Speaker
Hey there, I'm your host Beau Brusco, a former English language arts teacher and multimedia journalist.
Conversation with Cora Moore on Group Work in Education
00:00:26
Speaker
You know, group work can be hard work, whether you're in the third grade or in your 30s.
00:00:31
Speaker
And that's exactly what we're talking about today in our ongoing conversation with Coos Bay, Oregon Middle School teacher, Cora Moore.
Successes and Challenges in Motivating Students
00:00:49
Speaker
So this is your second year teaching effective communicators.
00:00:54
Speaker
Are you trying something new this year that you haven't or that you didn't try last year?
00:01:00
Speaker
So I think, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, I had tried to kind of put a few lessons together for my group of students that had done this previously.
00:01:11
Speaker
And I felt like that went really well and was successful at helping kind of motivate those students to get started and to really show them that they had some agency over the project as a whole.
00:01:24
Speaker
So I think that that was really successful and something that I might consider doing again, depending on the group of students.
Grading Teamwork and Intentional Strategies
00:01:32
Speaker
I also, as the project kind of wrapped up last year, a challenge I noticed was teamwork is hard and getting teams to work together is really challenging.
00:01:46
Speaker
You have students at all different levels academically and nothing shows, you know, just,
00:01:54
Speaker
desperate, uh, disparate levels like group work.
00:01:59
Speaker
Um, and so that was something that was really challenging last year.
00:02:03
Speaker
And I think, I mean, I navigated it.
00:02:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:06
Speaker
And I want to be a little more intentional about it this year.
00:02:09
Speaker
Um, but just making it very clear that I'm not going to sit down and grade the final article and that's everybody in the group's grade.
00:02:17
Speaker
Um, cause that would not be fair.
00:02:20
Speaker
Um,
00:02:21
Speaker
It's going to be based on so much more, you know, a final grade for this project is going to be based on so much more than that.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I think that that was something that they were really worried about last year.
00:02:31
Speaker
And I wasn't quite sure how I was going to grade it yet.
00:02:33
Speaker
And, um,
00:02:35
Speaker
So I do want to be a little more intentional about that.
Emphasizing Reflections and Guided Editing
00:02:39
Speaker
Can you tell us how, how you do plan on grading it this year?
00:02:42
Speaker
I'm just curious.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:44
Speaker
So I think that this year, um, I, the, the curriculum has a really great, like kind of self-reflection guide and like a group reflection guide.
00:02:52
Speaker
So, um, I think I'm going to try to emphasize that a little bit more, um, as well as just my own observations, um, about participation and, um,
00:03:04
Speaker
each individual's contribution to the final story.
00:03:08
Speaker
So I did divide it up.
00:03:10
Speaker
So each student kind of did take a beginning, middle and end of the story.
00:03:15
Speaker
And something that I think worked really well, because again, we had so many different levels of students writing these parts of the story.
00:03:24
Speaker
Some of them kind of saw the end product.
00:03:26
Speaker
They put their three parts together and they're like, oh, yeah.
00:03:32
Speaker
We don't want to turn this in.
00:03:34
Speaker
They didn't do their work.
00:03:35
Speaker
And this person writes way better than me.
00:03:37
Speaker
And it's not fair.
00:03:38
Speaker
And so what thing we did do is kind of towards the end as groups were starting to finish,
00:03:47
Speaker
we just pulled up some chairs and we put the finished story on the screen.
Student Reactions and Challenges
00:03:52
Speaker
And we were able to look through each person's section and acknowledge kind of what that section contributed to the story.
00:03:59
Speaker
And then to start talking about how can we kind of
00:04:04
Speaker
Add to or take away or mold or reshape or only a period here or capital letter here.
00:04:09
Speaker
So we edited together as a group with me to guide that.
00:04:13
Speaker
And I think that that was really an important part of making the stories kind of come together at the very end, because as especially younger students, editing is really hard.
00:04:27
Speaker
It's really hard work.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so I feel like they really needed some guidance there.
00:04:31
Speaker
And it was a good opportunity for me to
00:04:34
Speaker
acknowledge every person's contribution, even if, you know, they're a struggling writer or a struggling reader.
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:41
Speaker
Well, and I think that's a good question too, is for students who you, who you just noticed do tend to struggle in, in, you know, various ways, I suppose.
00:04:52
Speaker
How have they reacted to this, to this project?
00:04:58
Speaker
I think, yeah,
00:04:59
Speaker
It was at times overwhelming, feeling like they can't contribute much.
00:05:05
Speaker
Trying to kind of be mindful of those students and scaffold for them.
00:05:11
Speaker
So talking, you know, hey, tell me about your topic, you know.
00:05:17
Speaker
that was really good.
00:05:17
Speaker
Now let's write it down.
00:05:19
Speaker
Or here's a sentence starter or some of those kinds of things that we do to help students who are struggling with writing.
00:05:25
Speaker
We're still just as useful here in this journalism unit.
00:05:29
Speaker
And we're really effective at having them have at least something to contribute to, to the story.
00:05:38
Speaker
Of course, I had a lot of
00:05:39
Speaker
group members that didn't work well together, but I also had some groups that were really, really lovely and helping their students, their classmates to grow and giving suggestions.
00:05:50
Speaker
And so I think that they all kind of found their place.
00:05:53
Speaker
And again, as we kind of did that final editing, acknowledging each person's work and contribution to that story was really meaningful.
00:06:00
Speaker
And then getting to see the final product and have their name on it.
00:06:04
Speaker
I think it was really uplifting in the end, even though it was such a struggle for so many.
Scheduling and Curriculum Planning
00:06:10
Speaker
to see that final product was really an important moment.
00:06:13
Speaker
That's great.
00:06:14
Speaker
That's good to hear.
00:06:15
Speaker
Well, and for you as a, as the teacher, where do you find, I guess right now, and maybe you've changed it from last year, but where are you sort of fitting this unit in during the school year?
00:06:28
Speaker
And are you purposely trying to put it before or after a different unit that you're kind of tying in?
00:06:35
Speaker
Um,
00:06:37
Speaker
I honestly just kind of stuck it after our first unit of the year, getting to know the kids.
00:06:44
Speaker
We read through a novel together in each grade and we kind of just, I was able to get a feel for where everybody's at and get to know everybody.
00:06:51
Speaker
We had a few new students.
00:06:53
Speaker
And then I planned it pretty well to where we can get our interviews scheduled and then come back and kind of start that second half of the project after the winter break, which worked really well last year.
00:07:08
Speaker
So I tried to hit, tried to do that again this year.
Influence of Student Interests on Literature Selection
00:07:12
Speaker
When students, you know, obviously it's a wonderful experience, I think, as a teacher, because you get to see what your kids care about, right?
00:07:18
Speaker
The sort of issues that resonate with them.
00:07:21
Speaker
Does that inform maybe some of the literary texts that you choose to bring into class later in the school year?
00:07:28
Speaker
I haven't thought much about that, but I think that's a really thoughtful idea.
00:07:35
Speaker
I do.
00:07:36
Speaker
Like I said, we have a lot of literature in our school, which is so wonderful.
00:07:41
Speaker
But the standards have a lot of nonfiction skills emphasized as well.
00:07:47
Speaker
And so I.
00:07:48
Speaker
Trying to find really good sources of that has been a bit challenging, but I think maybe looking at some of the topics that they're interested in would be a great way to start bringing some of that into the classroom.
Episode Conclusion and Next Topic Preview
00:08:04
Speaker
And that's where we're going to end things today with Cora.
00:08:06
Speaker
We want to keep these episodes nice and short for you educators with your full schedules.
00:08:11
Speaker
Be sure to join us next time when Cora and I talk about the power of a story.
00:08:16
Speaker
Thanks again for tuning in.
00:08:17
Speaker
We have a new episode coming out Monday.
00:08:19
Speaker
Be on the lookout for that.
00:08:20
Speaker
I'm Bo Brusco.
00:08:21
Speaker
We'll see you next time.