Cooperative Learning Lesson Ideas
Unit #1 : Red Carpet Preview Day
Red Carpet Preview Day is an event designed to recruit high ability students. High ability students are invited to campus to learn more about Miami and the programs we offer. High ability students are those who have excelled in high school by achieving a high ACT/SAT score or high GPA. The event accommodates approximately 300 people total. The event offers a jam-packed day full of Miami experiences – anything from classes to sit in on to eating a Tuffy’s Roll at Pulley Dinner! It takes a team to successfully facilitate this event. Implementing some of the cooperative learning techniques would only be beneficial in preparing for Red Carpet Day.
- Techniques to be used
- Group Investigation: groups decide how to proceed based on information and facts
- Coop Coop: teams created based on commonalities
- Teams are created based on common goals/experience but full team will function as a group investigation (especially given each group with be going off of different data/facts)
- Each team member will be assigned a specific task to complete: Caterer, Tour Guide Manager, Venue Securer and Director
- All positions have their own responsibilities and they rotate each event so everyone understands/learns how to do every job
- It’s also important for everyone to understand how to manage/do every job in case they need to step in at any point (You never know what can happen!)
- Share this video about positive and negative team work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUXdrl9ch_Q
- Harkness style discussions to take place with our secretary monitoring input from the whole office
- Daily meetings occur to address concerns and questions
- Day of Event each member assumes assigned role and team facilities event smoothly and successfully as one unit
- Teaches team work, importance of communication, and how important versatility is
Unit #2 : Tour Guides
The student tour guides at Miami are responsible for giving official campus tours daily. In order to be selected as a tour guide, students must go through the 3-round-interview process. Because of the job’s communicative nature, we like to make sure candidates are comfortable speaking in all settings. Student do, however, need to stay up to date on all information. A great way to introduce new information/facts is by using the Jigsaw Method:
- Jigsaw Method
- Students will be broken up into groups of 4
- Each group will have a title – examples include “Managers, Tour Guide Leads, Veterans and Historians”
- These groups will stay the same for the whole semester with “information/fact refresher meetings” happening 3x/semester
- Each group will be responsible for researching information (one fact per group member) about Miami and then presenting it to the rest of the tour guides
- Topics will be assigned prior to each meeting to each group: anything from Freedom Summer, Cradle of Coaches and professional experience opportunities
- The presentation MUST feature each team member and one fact that THEY, the individual, found
- This is to ensure that there is equal effort among the group
- From all groups presenting, the guides will receive a broad understanding of the university
- Additionally to ensure this method is successful, we will ask each guide to share their thoughts anonymously about the information refresher through a short writing reflection
Here’s a small diagram I made to show how each group would be contributing 4 informational facts.
Once the tour guides have received all the information they can prepare a tour that has one fact from the Veterans, one fact from the Tour Guide Leads, one from the Managers, etc. The tours, after this information refresher, will contain information from everyone. It’s a great way for everyone to collaborate!