How can we teach in groups?

The best way to avoid confusion for the students or the teacher is by creating a group environment. Henry Ford once said, "Coming together is the beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." I feel this quote is fitting when you start to think about teaching in groups. In an agricultural classroom group learning is a common technique. It starts by bringing the teacher and the students together for a task or lesson.

Group teaching has many positives. The first positive is time.When students have common needs or knowledge on a subject group teaching is appropriate for use of instructional time. Teachers already use lectures and discussions for learning, which are two common group teaching techniques. These techniques allow for more instructional time on a lesson.

Some other ways that teaching in groups is done in a classroom are by demonstrations, field trips, role-playing, resource people, and cooperative learning. Although teaching to individuals is needed, in agriculture education we seek techniques of group teaching and learning. Agriculture education uses discussions for leadership activities, role-playing for agribusiness activities, and field trips for hands-on learning in many division of agriculture. Without teaching and learning in groups agriculture education would not be a successful as it is today in fostering the youth in agriculture.