An Educational Opportunity
Group Teaching in Wartime :Author: RUTH THOMAS, B.A. Educational Psychologist, C.A.M.W.
The coming of war has forced us to rediscover the merits of many discarded ways of living in all departments of life. In the realm of education, the emergency improvisation of home teaching units took us back temporarily to the days of the old dame school, but now that the first few weeks of initial disorganization which brought these to life have passed, the experience has left some of us with very serious doubts as to the superior merits of our modern large homogeneous classes and of that other distinctively modern institution, the school of from 300 to 400 children to which authority gives its blessing because therein alone is it possible to organize children into A, B, C, and D streams on the basis of intellectual capacity.
In only a minority of cases was a school class evacuated with its own teacher, and school parties were sometimes augmented by pre-school children, and last- minute haphazard additions.
In reception and neutral areas, regulation forbade children living more than ten minutes away to attend schools which could not provide air raid shelters. This meant a considerable number of transfers from school to school, and the setting up of temporary schools in halls and private houses throughout the areas. Numbers could not exceed twenty in any class room. Most children therefore attended either a morning or afternoon session in the teaching unit nearest home and the groups were naturally far from homogeneous in age and attainment, though in most cases the unit consisted of infant, junior or senior children.
In these circumstances, the teacher was cut off from all the aids which are considered essential for group work. Arithmetic and reading apparatus of a variety of grades had to be quickly made, and was nearly always insufficient. Silent occupa- tions were restricted by the need to prevent damage to private houses, so clay, paint and cut work were taboo, and the amount of ” tidy ” apparatus which the infant teacher could produce depended on her physical endurance in carrying a large suit- case from one house to another and back again to school for storage.
Here is an extract from the report of the Bradford educational psychologist on the working of such a scheme in her area, referring particularly to infant and junior children:?
It is usual to see from four to five children grouped round a table doing their own individual arithmetic, writing or whatever it may be, stopping from time to time to compare notes with their next door neighbours, or to receive or give some piece of advice on the work in hand. These children work together more like a group of university students than what is commonly understood to be typical schoolchildren.
The remaining children are probably divided into two groups, one perhaps doing group reading in one corner with the teacher in charge, the other doing individual work, jigsaws, number, word or other constructive play, either round another large table or in better instances on small tables borrowed from the school for this purpose. The teacher moves round from group to group… . There is no compulsory silence, the general impression is one of meaningful activity. No one is disturbed by others and when a stranger enters the room, she is practically unnoticed and is not greeted as a welcome diversion, as is sometimes the case in normal school classes.
Teachers’ reports, in the case of infants and juniors, stress the amazing improve- ment in formal subjects by all types of children including the backward, and the rapidity with which children learn to work alone, and co-operate with others. They regret, however, the curtailment of handicrafts, music and physical training which seemed inevitable under early war conditions. Senior teachers particularly felt this absence of facilities for team work.
Believing as I do that it is the emotional training through creative work which is of supreme importance in school life, I was amazed to find, when I set out to observe the system for myself, that my misgivings about it had been unfounded. For this training in small groups even when confined to the 3 R’s was undoubtedly yielding the children fundamental emotional satisfaction of the same type as they could achieve under ordinary school conditions, only through handicrafts. Because the groups were small, a child did not, as a member of them, have such a struggle for recognition. Because he was never more than an arm’s length away from the teacher there was not the desperate feeling that he would be entirely forgotten unless he made himself ” felt ” in a fashion orderly or otherwise. Because the work had to be suited to his individual standard of intelligence and achievement, even a ” D ” child could attain success at his own level. Because talking and the giving of mutual help was allowed and the bright and the dull were at the same table, there was friendliness and co-operation instead of the unconscious antagonisms and jealousies which too often lie under the surface of ” A ” and ” B ” streams.
In fact, the groups were achieving all that was best in the family spirit and many a teacher found herself being called ” Mum ” inadvertently. Had they continued, I feel sure that all the children would have known more arithmetic and have done more silent reading; perhaps they might have had fewer geography and history and Nature lessons, but the backward children at least would not have known any less when they came to leave school and the bright ones would have picked up a great deal of knowledge from silent reading and explored their ability to learn by themselves. Moreover, their attitude towards authority and towards one another would have been one of friendly confidence lacking fear and suspicion, and in the case of the ‘ dull despair and bitterness lacking also. In this frame of mind they might have passed the rest of their lives more receptive of the life around them and more willing to face it with appreciation rather than with ambition or antagonism.
It w as as a result of evacuation experiences that I began to remember my own early training in rural schools in Australia where children of all ages walk a couple ?f miles to the nearest school or are brought in by bus from much greater distances, and where the teacher is faced each morning with up to twenty-five children ranging from 5 to 14 years. I then remembered that in the less populous parts of Northern England and Scotland, which have not fallen victim to the progressive system of transporting children 500 to 800 strong to big central schools, this system is still in widespread operation. Investigation showed that there was no fundamental difference between the practice in Britain and in Australia.
At the present moment we do not know what is likely to happen to education in the next twelve months if war conditions on the home front should change radically, and it is chiefly for this reason that I give below a more detailed account of the organization and conduct of such rural schools.
Group units may contain boys and girls of all ages, from infant to senior school, and can be most successfully worked when numbers do not exceed twenty-five. There are usually two infant sub-sections, two junior, and if necessary a senior. For arithmetic it often happens that a child may be in a lower sub-section than for English, or vice versa.
The syllabus usually contains four types of activity:? A. Lessons at varying times to each of the four groups separately on formal subjects, e.g. mechanical reading, arithmetic, composition. B. Lessons to combinations of groups at varying times on literary and social subjects, e.g. the two infants’ sections may combine for story work, the two juniors for history and geography.
C. Activities for the whole group combined, e.g. music, mime, drama, recitation and physical training. This allows for the inspiration which comes only from a ” crowd ” feeling. In physical work, the infants are interspersed amongst the older children, but when they form into separate groups for team work, these groups are age groups and each pursues an activity suitable to itself. In such dancing as is beyond the scope of the younger ones, the latter form into a percussion band which, whilst the others dance, beats the rhythm with the gramophone on percussion instruments. Gardening is an activity in which the whole group can co-operate; the infants planting seeds or doing surface digging or filling and painting window boxes.
Centres of interest giving rise to handwork, such as the making of historical and geographical villages from waste material, may employ all ages on items of varying difficulty, e.g. infants may make and paste paper cobbles for a street while the seniors dress the historical puppet figures. D. Silent activities for each group at some time to alternate with the lessons to one group, or to combinations of groups, and to be carried on with a minimum of supervision whilst the teacher is actively teaching elsewhere. These will include:
For 6 to 8 years’.
Matching activities in reading, arithmetic and spelling. Completion exercises in story building. Simple mechanical weaving patterns. Building with bricks. Picture cutting, pasting, cutting and colouring. Cutting of animal with fretsaw, after tracing outlines. (Grocers’ tea boxes provide wood.) Silent reading. Painting and drawing with imaginative motives.
For 8 to 12 years:
Completion exercises in reading and spelling. Silent reading to answer questions. Read and Do exercises. Silent working of mechanical arithmetic. More complicated weaving patterns. Stick and potato printing. Painting and drawing on realistic subjects. Paragraph compositions. Completing maps and plans of locality following lessons and excursions.
Classifying collections with a pedagogic basis, e.g. insects, leaves and botanical specimens. Pasting into exercise books labels from merchandise, stamps, pictures, round a centre of interest, e.g. animals, boats and machines, with suitable descriptions and under certain headings.
For 12 to 14 years:
Silent study of books and newspapers to answer questions or fill in details in diagrams.
Puppet and mask making. Knitting from patterns (girls). Embroidery (girls). Cretonne box covering, pouffe making, making of furniture seats from boxes and cretonne. Map making and town planning following lessons. Diary and story writing and illustrating. Classifying and pasting collections of pictures from catalogues, e.g. for girls, children’s clothing, its cost and suitability (after hygiene lessons), or of household objects (after talks on cost and choice). Wireless talks. Some of the B.B.C. spelling and language games and during the first weeks on evacuation, their talks on things to make, as well as on the dramatic renderings of history and geography were admirably suitable for the unsupervised listening of a trained group.
The success of silent activities in written English depends very largely on the careful grading of questions, from those requiring simply the filling in of single words ?r mere reproduction, to those for more advanced and intelligent children demanding thought and further reading.
Assignments can sometimes be set from the blackboard or from text books, but more often they require to be so carefully graded, especially in arithmetic, that they must be set out on cards of differing difficulty, stored and classified in wall packets to which the children have access and to which they go for further work as each assign- ment is finished. A rural teacher in Scotland writes to me:? I have seen a group of five year olds who, on entering the school after the long summer vacation, ran to the wall packets to make sure that their reading and counting games were still there. But I think the surest compliment to the success of the method came from a composition on ” My School ” by one of the older pupils: ” We are very happy at our school because we are always busy. There is always plenty to do.”
Apparatus of the diagram type can be designed even for practical handwork such ps puppet making which will teach the intelligent older child how to proceed. He m his turn may then teach the duller ones. Correction of written work may be Provided for by five-minute breaks in between lessons when lists of answers are read ?ut, or by answer cards. Actual correction of difficulties may sometimes become a teaching lesson. Frequent inspection of work and comment is of course necessary, ^luch of the apparatus for infant and junior classes should be of the self-corrective type, e.g. jigsaws for learning tables where the completed picture proves if the tables have been rightly matched, e.g. 9 by 6 with 54.
The following is an extract from a typical timetable:? Group 1. Group 2. Group 3. Group 4. 9.30?10.0 Lesson with Silent written work, Silent written work, Silent, e.g. Teacher. e.g. reading and e.g. composition. mechanical questions. arithmetic. 10.0?10.15 Silent activity, e.g. Quick oral Collection of Collection of work picture colouring correction. material. and preparation on first lesson. and distribution of material for next lesson. 10.15?10.40 Silent activity, e.g. Lesson with Teacher, e.g. geography, Silent activity of reading or history or literature. non-written kind, arithmetic e.g. newspaper matching. cutting study, or map making. Knitting or mask making. 10.40?10.45 Correction with Clearing up Teacher. 10.45 BREAK 11.0?11.30 Silent activity, e.g. Silent activity, answering questions from Lesson: History, cutting animals in silent study of text on previous lesson, geography or cardboard, and current events colouring for related to project modelling. previous study of papers.
Teachers who have watched the progress in formal subjects and the development in initiative, social consciousness and security of children trained in the old rural schools, never feel quite sure that the large central schools which have taken their place with modern scientific apparatus, specialist teachers, C and D streams and entire absence of intimate contacts, are any more than a sign of the genius of the age for organization and mass production. Indeed, I have recently had contact with a progressive authority which is planning its central school organization on a vertical system merely to avoid the horrors of the so-called homogeneous class, and to encourage its teachers to use group work within the class. Thus, in a three year course, each class will consist of equal numbers of new entrants and of first and second year children, and will progress through the school with the same teacher for most subjects during the three years. It will be an adventure in organization and curriculum making, but in character making, no adventure. The results in general are a foregone conclusion.
It is on something along these lines that teachers of ” backward ” and ” opportunity ” classes (not C and D streams) and of classes in special schools have been experimenting for a long time. Even in schools which have a vertical classification for arithmetic, grouping cannot be avoided. Though Bill and John are both demoted for arithmetic because subtraction is a bugbear and nothing known beyond this stage, Bill’s difficulty is taking numbers from 0 or 0 from other numbers, and John’s that he uses a muddle of equal addition and decomposition methods,. having been taught in different schools by both. Putting these children in a class beginning subtraction, and refusing individual attention to their errors will never solve the problem.
In reading, the same situation exists. In a class of backward children may be found one who is right-eyed and left-handed and is probably, in consequence, in- capable of learning by any method except that of the old Blackie primer, i.e. phono- grams. Another with an excellent visual memory but soured as to reading by a long period of unsuccess lacks only a motive to make good progress on sentence method; a third knows his phonic sounds but has never been taught the compound consonants (as ” th ” and ” wh “) and some of the necessary ” look and say ” phonograms (e.g. ” ight “)? Nothing but group work is going to give these children success, and fortunately the numbers in organized backward classes do not usually exceed twenty-five. This raises the fundamental point behind any discussion of the kind attempted by this article, for the making of individual apparatus and the supervision and individual diagnosis, which is necessary for group work, is impossible when classes range between forty and fifty.
During the early days of evacuation, I wondered often if the children would not do better on permanent half-time or shift schooling, so halving the numbers in the classes, if only organized play centres, gymnastic clubs, children’s museums and art galleries were available for the rest of the day. But to expect this under present conditions is, of course, to dream a dream verging on the irresponsibility of phantasy !
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