Working on group projects is never a fun situation. Especially when the groups are small. In some situations, everyone is willing to put in their share of the work and truly make it a group project. However, the majority of the time, there is that one kid who brings down the whole group. Doesn't do their work, or doesn't do their work on time. This makes that much more work for the rest of the group who not only have to do their own share, but they also have to pick up what their group member left behind.
This is happening to me in my English class this semester. The teacher split the class into two sets of groups. One group was to lead a discussion based on the previous night's reading. The other was to work collaboratively on a annotated bibliography. For the discussion lead, my group had two members: my self and another student, whom I'll call Don. In order to successfully accomplish the discussion activity, the group leading had to read the selection early and generate a list of 5-7 questions to be distributed to the class 24 hours prior to meeting. Two days before the discussion, I sent Don my list of questions and asked him to add his and email it to the class 24 hours before class. When I hadn't heard from him 20 minutes before the deadline, I finished the set of questions and sent the email myself. Three hours after the deadline, I hear that he is still working on the reading and is a bit behind. Will he finish the reading before class? I wondered. The teacher commented on how good our questions were and was excited for us to lead the discussion the following day. In class, Don did a good job of asking questions and calling on students that hadn't spoken much. We both contributed equally to the leading part of the discussion lead. My question is this: do I tell my teacher that Don wasn't prepared before class to write any of the questions? Does that make me a tattle-tale? A good group member?
The second group was working together on the annotated bibliography. We decided as a group to work on the topic of gender and literacy around the world, each of the three of us taking a different region to research. We each had to generate five annotations and collaborate so that they sounded as if written by a single person. In addition, we had to put together a presentation for the class to show them what we researched. My two group members I'll call Leigh and John. Leigh was working on a Asia as her region and John was focused on Africa while I looked at the Middle East. We decided that the Sunday before the assignment was due, we should all post our annotations on the GoogleDoc and meet to revise them together. Leigh and I had all of our annotations completed at this point; John barely had two done. After the meeting, we said our edits and revisions needed to be completed by Tuesday night so that someone could upload them to the folder before the deadline. By Wednesday evening, John still had not completed his part of the presentation while Leigh and I had worked on editing the annotations and compiling the PowerPoint. The issue here is that we are getting one grade for the whole group. If John doesn't pull his weight, my grade goes down. To what extent do I do his work? I would be working toward my own grade, yet he would not be contributing to the group project?
I'm curious to know what you would do in these situations.
This is happening to me in my English class this semester. The teacher split the class into two sets of groups. One group was to lead a discussion based on the previous night's reading. The other was to work collaboratively on a annotated bibliography. For the discussion lead, my group had two members: my self and another student, whom I'll call Don. In order to successfully accomplish the discussion activity, the group leading had to read the selection early and generate a list of 5-7 questions to be distributed to the class 24 hours prior to meeting. Two days before the discussion, I sent Don my list of questions and asked him to add his and email it to the class 24 hours before class. When I hadn't heard from him 20 minutes before the deadline, I finished the set of questions and sent the email myself. Three hours after the deadline, I hear that he is still working on the reading and is a bit behind. Will he finish the reading before class? I wondered. The teacher commented on how good our questions were and was excited for us to lead the discussion the following day. In class, Don did a good job of asking questions and calling on students that hadn't spoken much. We both contributed equally to the leading part of the discussion lead. My question is this: do I tell my teacher that Don wasn't prepared before class to write any of the questions? Does that make me a tattle-tale? A good group member?
The second group was working together on the annotated bibliography. We decided as a group to work on the topic of gender and literacy around the world, each of the three of us taking a different region to research. We each had to generate five annotations and collaborate so that they sounded as if written by a single person. In addition, we had to put together a presentation for the class to show them what we researched. My two group members I'll call Leigh and John. Leigh was working on a Asia as her region and John was focused on Africa while I looked at the Middle East. We decided that the Sunday before the assignment was due, we should all post our annotations on the GoogleDoc and meet to revise them together. Leigh and I had all of our annotations completed at this point; John barely had two done. After the meeting, we said our edits and revisions needed to be completed by Tuesday night so that someone could upload them to the folder before the deadline. By Wednesday evening, John still had not completed his part of the presentation while Leigh and I had worked on editing the annotations and compiling the PowerPoint. The issue here is that we are getting one grade for the whole group. If John doesn't pull his weight, my grade goes down. To what extent do I do his work? I would be working toward my own grade, yet he would not be contributing to the group project?
I'm curious to know what you would do in these situations.
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