This just in: Cooperative Learning has taking our current educational studies by storm.
What is Cooperative Learning?
Cooperative Learning is the idea that students take learning into their own hands while teachers take a step back. Students learn through various styles of learning activities while being in small groups usually referred to as teams.
What can it do for students?
In a study conducted in 1991, when cooperative learning was starting to gain attention, they witnessed how cooperative learning can:
-Encourage positive interdependence
-Face-to-face promotes interaction
-Help foster accountability and responsibility
-Helps with social skills
-Exposes student to collaboration efforts
Trying to incorporate it?
Here’s what you can do:
Form teams through some random means such as having students draw a card from a bag and say all the animals are a team, all the tv shows are team; etc.
Have the group sit together and brainstorm a team name. Team names are fun for the students and encourage a sense of belonging.
Present them with a topic or focus. Let’s say chemical reactions for example.
You give each student a version of the reaction (covalent, ionic, ionic with transition metals) to become the “professional” of.
They each have to research their expertise area with other experts from other teams and share their findings to their original team members.
You then assess their newly found knowledge from their discussion.
This is known as jigsaw II and it is one of many cooperative learning styles including others such as group inquiry.
The importance of utilizing cooperative learning can be insurmountable and dire to the student’s individual learning cycle.
https://twitter.com/WyattBischoff/status/1047995521992986624
I love how easy to read your blog post was. I have the habit of typing in paragraphs, and I want to change that in my own posts. It’s very clear how each step can add to a well-designed collaborative approach. I also like the idea of going deeper in explanation for one format (like you did for Jigsaw II) instead of trying to cover a little bit about every format.
Great blog post! I really like how you talk about the ways cooperative learning has positive effects on the students and it’s not just another way to teach a concept. It’s more than just introducing material in a more engaging way, it’s actually doing so much more for the student. I also think your example of the chemical reactions is a good topic to use cooperative learning for. Do you think that Jigsaw II is the easiest to implement and most commonly used cooperative learning method? Is there another one that you think you may use a lot in your classroom?
Wyatt,
I really liked your post! I think you got straight to the point but also described cooperative learning vert well. I like how you made your suggested strategies more universal but also included how it would be applied to the science classroom as well. I also agree 100% with your tweet. My only suggestion is to maybe add a video or article to summarize or backup your points in a more creative fashion. Overall great post!
Wyatt
THIS JUST IN: your blog post is fantastic! What really stood out to me is that you incorporated what benefits cooperative learning does for students. Many of us didn’t focus on how cooperative learning can positively impact students and their learning. I do love the many examples you give for how to incorporate GOOD cooperative learning into the classroom. Just a suggestion, I would say what the techniques are for cooperative learning so we can get a better idea of different styles of teaching and learning that can go on. It clarifies that there are many different way to approach cooperative learning.
Michael
Michael,
Thank you so much for your nice comments on my blog post! I do think I could’ve definitely gone more in depth with the different styles of teaching and learning and the techniques for cooperative learning.
-Wyatt
Hello Wyatt!
I like how you start the blog post. It is like a news report. I like how you relate it to chemistry as well. My license will be in chemistry and biology, but there are things in chemistry I like better than biology and visa versa. I personally like the Jigsaw II method as well. It is quite helpful when groups of students are each held accountable for certain parts of a picture and come together to form the full picture. I like your idea of having kids be in random groups. I try to do that when I am teaching so kids meet someone new. I work at a STEM summer camp and I tried this method with the students. It worked well. Different people met each other and they got to learn more about each other. As a teacher, I think that when deciding where to put kids in the classroom, I am going to have a bag of Guardians of the Galaxy pencils. Students will each pick out one pencil and sit based on what character they got. I am a nerd, but who cares. Your idea was awesome. I feel that putting kids in random groups prevents one from being left out. The readings in class say that we should let students pick groups sometimes. I agree to a point, but I like randomization better. I like your chemistry lesson as well and how you tie it to Jigsaw II. That was interesting. The only thing I would suggest in your post is putting in a video and going more in depth on the types of cooperative learning. I love how you define cooperative learning. I did that on mine too. Excellent post!
Delaina 🙂
Delaina,
I agree, chemistry is amazing! I also love the idea of the pencil, random group pairing, I agree that it helps prevent students be alone! I agree my post was kind of bland in the media department and I definitely should’ve probably incorporated a video of some form. Thank you so much for your comment, by the way!
Wyatt