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Alternatives to Small-Group Work

المؤلف:  Tara Goldstein

المصدر:  Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School

الجزء والصفحة:  P77-C4

2025-09-27

509

Alternatives to Small-Group Work

In addition to lowering the stakes of the group work, teachers can also alleviate linguistic and racial tensions by alternating small-group work with whole-group work. Examples of whole group work that provides students with opportunities to practice English include reciting self-enhancing poetry or prose in chorus, and asking students to answer questions in unison. Tara noted that when students in Mr. Robertson's class answered questions in unison, several Cantonese-speaking students who were usually silent responded to the question.

In conclusion, the pedagogical engagements for responding to silences and linguistic and racial tensions in multilingual, multiracial schools ask teachers to work with students' feelings of embarrassment, frustration, anger, and dynamics of identity. They also bring teachers face to face with everyday racism and the legacy of colonialism. The following activities for further reflection and discussion have been created by Tara to help her and her students work with issues arising from inhibitive and attentive silences in multilingual classrooms. The activities can be adapted for use in high-school classrooms and are offered as examples of ways we might develop rich academic and moral content for multilingual classrooms.