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Working on a small group is part of Indonesian culture and has been called ‘gotong royong’. Because of this, perhaps, educators or parents in Indonesia here want their students learn how to collaborate at schools. It seems that teachers often ask students to study in small groups. Perhaps, at least two students in a group. For particular moment, teachers sometime group students into four or more. Today, I talked with two primary school teacher (fifth grade) on how they usually group students.

The first teacher said, firstly, she asks 5 top students in the class to sit separately and then (simply) make a group with their neighbours. So, she will get five small groups. A great way, I said! She hopes the top student will be the motor of discussion in the group because of their better knowledge on the task, but sometimes she found that these students tend to be dominant, indeed. The other students in a group might have good familiarity each other, I think this would be benefit to minimise shyness or regret. However, it could possibly students in this group make a tangent or off-task activities, or just become suckers!

The second teacher told me that he’s used to asking top students to stand up, and then choose classmates who will be her/his group members. These top students have task to be the leader in their group and responsible to lead discussion for accomplishing the given task. This is an excellent way and similar to the first teacher, but the familiarity among students in a group might be increased. However, one must make sure that group members are not loafing to the the leader, as well as, the leader know that his/her job is leading discussion toward understanding the problem and solutions, not simply distributed his/her answer to the group members.

Well, it is interesting studying how students work in small group. Literature on small group is huge, I believe, but I am still keen to find out the most practical and advantegous way of group learning.