Thinking+Interdependently

2. Thinking Interdependently My understanding of this habit is to work together with the peers in your group and being open to feedback and ideas and to support each other in the learning process. As in some situations, a challenging goal may require more than one person to accomplish. Also, this means including everyone in the group to participate.

"No one must feel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it." Willie Unsoeld.

Taken from: http://keebraparkshs.eq.edu.au/images/photoalbum/ESL%20Unit%20-%20Group%20Work.gif, just an example of group work

An example: In our Experimental Lab Design, Ms. Knowles assigned us into groups, where each group contained at least one girl (since in our class there were significantly fewer girls than boys) and three boys. At first, we were not enthusiastic in having assigned into a group and would have rather created our own. However, after a short period of awkward silence, we started brainstorming ideas for our experimental lab. Some of our ideas include, coke and mentos, sugar water, water pH levels, etc. In order for everyone to participate equally in the group, each person had to provide at least one to two ideas for the basis of the experiment and the rest had to provide constructive feedback. Cynthia recalled working with this liquid which had odd properties of solids and liquids (a non-Newtonian fluid) and through some brief research, we discovered this material to be Oobleck, or a mixture of corn starch and water. I thought of working with pH levels and sugar water however due to how "old" and simple these kinds of experiments were, we decided that Oobleck was certainly a new and interesting concept to work with. As we continued in our working, we split up into two small groups where one developed the procedure and the other worked on the materials list. Furthermore, this allowed us to equally divide the work and to ask for help from the other group. Also, we each researched a little bit about the qualities of Oobleck and brainstormed what would be an appropriate lab for it, and everyone in the group was engaged in this conversation since Oobleck certainly seemed like a fun, new type of object to experiment with.