Peer Based Learning Reflection

Introduction Although I will not be working with high school aged students in my teaching career, that I know of so far, I can’t say that I won’t be working with non-English speaking students in the near future. The students that I worked with at the Steps to College program on the UNG Gainesville campus were a prime example of working with students that didn’t necessarily have English as their first language. The summer program was focused on one class credit that the student chooses to take to count for their credit next school year and to have a more personal experience with what they are learning. The whole point of these summer classes is to learn the material and take an exam that counts as their grade for the class and the credit for the course. These students understood our grading system and that once the exam was over they could forget all that they learned the next day if they wanted to.

Steps to College: UNG Gainesville Campus

The Steps to College program was provided by Dr. Moody but the individual classes were taught by separate teachers that also taught during the school year in that particular subject. I was placed in the Civics class with Mr. Wisecup with a group of nine students that ranged from ninth grade to eleventh …show more content…
Whenever Mr. Wisecup would give the students opportunities to work together or to do different stations around the room to fill out a worksheet the students worked with haste in almost a competition way so as to finish before the other. Although Levine, Kelly, Karakoc, & Haidet (2007) worked with medical students, they pointed out that “peer evaluation is a core component of team-based learning and is seen as essential for holding students accountable and preventing the phenomenon of “social loafing”.” The students never got lazy because everyone else was working hard enough and the teacher didn’t allow students to fall behind because the course was so fast