In Frey and Fisher’s article “Motivating Requires a Meaningful Task” they discuss the importance of productive group work as a classroom tool. I think that their observations about the delicate balance between too many group members (some students do not make an effort because “they know the work will be done by others”) and too few (“students begin to feel overwhelmed and give up on the task”) were right on track. I also liked the idea that the group size should change depending on the members and the class at hand and that the groups should consist of diverse skill levels. My only concern about forming the groups in this way is whether students of different levels would work well together. I remember that when I was in middle school, we were divided into reading groups based on our literacy skills and the students in the separate groups made fun of each other for the content and difficulty level of the books the respective groups were reading. The behavior seems (and was) petty, retrospectively, but I imagine that students today may conduct themselves similarly. On the other hand, when I worked in groups with peers of varying skill levels, usually in classes other than Language Arts, I always found that helping each other was rewarding and enjoyable.  In order for teachers to prevent riffs between students at different levels, I think that they should establish the precedent in their classrooms that all students will be working together regardless of individual achievement.

Another passage from the article that I found interesting was the section on the complexity of a task. Frey and Fisher write, “if students merely divide [a project] up and agree to meet again later to assemble the final product, it’s likely that the task was not challenging” (Frey and Fisher 31).  While that was not how I approached group projects in middle school, in my experience in both high school and college, that is definitely how group work is conducted. However, I don’t think that my group members and I approached a project in this way because the assignment wasn’t difficult, but rather because we had limited time in which we could all work together on the project. I am personally not a huge fan of group projects and regularly find them taxing, so I don’t think that they need to be any more challenging. I just wonder, after reading this article, if part of the reason why I don’t like group projects is that the assignment is not difficult enough to motivate my group members and I to want to collaborate. I will have to consider this point with greater attention when I am designing lessons for my future students and inevitably dividing them into groups.