Stop. Cooperate and Listen.

I know the lyric is “collaborate” but I just had to okay.

Cooperative learning is a great way to build teamwork in your classroom and get your students to take more responsibility for their learning. I know what you’re thinking, “But I already have my students doing group work, so I must be using cooperative learning!”, and to that I say, WRONG.

Cooperative learning isn’t just putting your students into groups and then letting them go. It’s much more detailed and, honestly, much more fun for the students. Cooperative learning allows for each student to be responsible for a different aspect of the work, and ONLY THEY CAN DO IT (no more Stingy Sarah not letting anyone else do the work).

This video goes more in-depth about what Cooperative Learning is, and how to use it.

 

Different Types of CL

There are five main types of Cooperative learning:

• STAD
  • Makes learning procedural
  • Teacher Presentation→Group Work→Individual Quiz
  • Based on individual improvement and Team recognition
• Jigsaw II
  • Makes students responsible for their own learning
  • Introduces relying on others for information
  • Expert and Learning groups
    • Students are broken up into their home group (aka Learning Group) and an Expert Group
    • The Expert group is made up of 3-4 people all learning the same topic
    • Everyone then goes back to their home group and teaches their specific topic
  • Efficient and Utilizes different styles of teaching
• Co-op Co-op
  • Encourages curiosity
  • Students break into teams by what they want to learn
  • Students then give a presentation on their topic
  • Students evaluate themselves
• Group Investigation
  • Students organize by specific topic
  • Plan out a course of action
  • Analyze and evaluate the information gathered and plan how to present
  • Presentations and evaluations
• Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning
  • Arguably the most frustrating as a student, from my point of view
  • Generates an authentic discussion about the tip
  • Teacher proposes a topic, and then the class discusses
  • STUDENTS DON’T NEED ALL THE ANSWERS
    • This is why its frustrating

Science Lesson Using CL

Science lessons lend themselves pretty well to using cooperative learning. Here are a couple ideas for how to implement cooperative learning in the classroom:

1. Using Jigsaw, students can learn about the different periodic trends, what drives them, and how to recognize them. Then, the students get back into their groups and present their specific trend either through a lecture, pictures/visuals, or any other way that get’s their point across
2. Using Guided Reciprocal Learning, propose a mystery! Allow the students to break up into teams and try to solve the mystery using concepts they have learned in the past (but don’t give them the answer I guess)

But What’s the Merit?

Cooperative learning isn’t just an excuse for students to sit there and socialize (although they will do that, watch out), but it really does help them learn. It builds team work, responsibility, and enhances cognitive development. It also helps with building social skills among your students, which is important not only in the younger grades, but in the higher ones as well. So why don’t you Stop. Cooperate and Listen?

Cooperative learning is more than just group work! Get your students to be responsible for their own learning. The more they cooperate, the more they'll learn. @AnnMacKenzie #EDT431 #NSTA #scienceteaching

— Mr. Thomas (@BryceSBThomas) October 3, 2018