Cooperative Learning In the Classroom

What is Cooperative Learning?

So many of my teachers assign projects that involve some type of group work to encourage us to work together. But is this cooperative learning? No. In so many of the groups I have been in for these types of assignments, there has always been at least one person who takes a step back and relies on everyone else. At the same time, these projects rarely encourage me to actually learn the material.

The real goal of cooperative learning is to encourage dialogue, interaction, and authentic learning between students. Instead of the teacher standing in front of the class lecturing, the students take control of their own learning and, in theory, teach each other.

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Key Parts of Cooperative Learning:

• Teams
  • You want the teams to be big enough so that all of the material can be learned but not too big so that every member of the team has a key responsibility or job

• Directions
  • The students need directions to understand what the goal is and what they should be accomplishing individually, as a team, and with other groups

• Assign Roles
  • It’s important to assign roles to your students so each person knows what they are responsible for learning and doing

• Monitor
  • Walk around and observe each student and group to make sure that they not only stay on task, but to make sure they understand what they are learning and to see if they need any help

• Evaluate
  • In order to hold each student accountable and to measure learning, you have to include some sort of assessment whether this is a written quiz/exam, a reflection, etc.

Different Types of Cooperative Learning

There are many ways to include cooperative learning in your classroom but highlighted below are a few popular models you can adopt.

•  Jigsaw II
  • Goal: to encourage group work and encourage students to take their learning into their own hands
  • Process: Break up into learner groups and expert groups. Each student is a member of both groups but they first break up into their expert groups. Once each expert group feels they have become an expert on a topic, they go back to their learner groups and teach the other group members about their topic. Use a worksheet or guiding questions to direct students’ thinking.

• Co-0p Co-op
  • Goal: for students to gain and express curiosity and be in charge of their own learning.
  • Process: Similar to Jigsaw II, Co-op Co-op also uses groups. After a short introduction to the unit, students discuss the types of topics, relevant to the unit, that they want to learn and that they’re interested in. Once broken up into groups, each group picks a topic from the previous discussion and then they break that topic into mini-topics. Each mini-topic should be researched and learned by each member of the group. Each member then teaches their group about what they learned and then they construct a presentation about their topic as a whole, to be given to the class.

• Group Investigation
  • Goal: to get each and every student involved in the learning.
  • Process: Similar to Co-op Co-op, students are grouped together and choose a topic that they research and study. Each student within the group (or pairs) then learn about subtopics and come up with a plan on how to learn and study that subtopic. Students should learn using a wide variety of activities and then summarize their studying strategy into a presentation for the class.

• Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning
  • Goal: to encourage and foster discussion in the classroom when learning a topic
  • Process: After a small lecture about a topic, teachers provide basic question stems like “what is the main idea of…?” “What if…?” or “What are the strengths and weaknesses of…?” Students use these stems to construct their own questions using what they learned from the mini lecture. After they have their questions, they get into groups and pose their questions to other students to generate a discussion.

 

But remember, when doing a cooperative learning activity, always keep an eye on your students to make sure they’re actually cooperating!