Unit(s): Group Interaction
Purpose:
The purpose of this exercise is to introduce students to group work.
Objective:
Students will be able to define social group, task group, and social/task group and to give examples of each.
Materials:
- Cards on which the following words have been printed:
- Envelope 1 contains: Spring, begun, eager, into
- Envelope 2 contains: here, blinded, have, dashed, the
- Envelope 3 contains: is, The, start, reading, The
- Envelope 4 contains: sunlight, barking, I'm, cat, house
- Envelope 5 contains: The, me, dogs, to
Procedure:
- Divide the class into groups of 5 students each. (If the class number is not divisible by 5, you may wish to increase the number of students and add another sentence in the exercise.
- Each group member must construct a sentence. No member may talk at any time. No one may ask for a word from any other person. A member may pass any of his or her words to any other group member at any time. Point out that the first words in the sentences have been capitalized as a clue.
- The unscrambled sentences are:
Spring is here.
The sunlight blinded me.
The dogs have begun barking.
I'm eager to start reading.
The cat dashed into the house.- It may be possible to form other meaningful sentences with these words, so do not require students to arrive at exactly these sentences. The only requirement is that each sentence is grammaticaly and syntactically correct.
- After groups have finished, discuss the activity. Encourage students to talk about the difficulties they encountered and the strategies they used to overcome them.