1.1. Description: Students learn to read, write, and think by having meaningful engagements with more experienced individuals (Wells, 1990). Many times these individuals may be their peers.
1.2. Advantages: 1. Actively involving students in learning. Each member has opportunities to contribute in small groups. Students are apt to take more ownership of their material and to think critically about related issues when they work as a team.
1.3. Technology could be incorporated in different activities such as a Jeopardy game. This game has different teams that are able to pick different categories and answer quickly.
1.4. Potential Problem: Making members of the group responsible for each other's learning. This can place too great a burden on some students.
2. Having Choices
2.1. Description: By giving students options to choose from in what they read, how they read, and how they respond to a piece of literature, we allow them to actively construct their own meanings (Martinez & Roser, 1991).
2.2. Advantage: 1. Involving the students in decisions, such as making the classroom rules with help show them ownership and to take better responsibility in the classroom and their work. 2. When this is done correctly can help students gain personal empowerment in school in healthy, productive, and responsible ways.
2.3. Potential problems: If this process is done incorrectly then student could get a false taste of power in a negative way and it could end up in a power struggle between teacher and student.
2.4. Technology could be incorporated in many different ways. I feel that I use this strategy when students (kindergarten) have a choice of what Daily 5 station they want to be in for the day. That way they have ownership over what way they would like to learn.
