Assignment #7: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 7 – Cooperative Learning.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategy of Cooperative Learning in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter. Below are the questions to help you complete your self-assessment. After completing your self assessment please post a thought or two as a comment (click on comment link below) to this posting labeled Week Seven: Cooperative Learning.
• What is your purpose for using cooperative learning in your classroom?
• What kind of cooperative learning activities do you use with your students?
• Think of a time when you used cooperative learning and was pleased with the results. Why did it work well?
• Think of a time when you used cooperative learning and was not pleased with the results. Why didn’t it work well?
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 7 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section for Cooperative Learning After completing your chapter reflection, please post it as a comment (click on comment link below) in the posting labeled Week Seven: Cooperative Learning.
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to try out with your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom). Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Seven: Cooperative Learning. Click on the “comment” link below.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: Use the following sequence of questions/prompts to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post your brief reflection to the posting labeled Week Seven: Cooperative Learning by clicking on the “comment” link below.
How has the information you read in this chapter on Cooperative Learning effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• How might I change how use cooperative learning in my classroom?
• What is something you now understand better about cooperative learning?
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11 comments:
Assignment #7
Part C:
I really enjoyed this section in the text and have many plans in how I would like to implement these ideas in my classroom. In reading, I have realized that I need to add more structure to my formal groups. I do choose these groups at random to ensure that they are heterogeneous, but I do not usually facilitate their organization by assigning specific roles and requiring students to describe their participation in the group outcome for individual accountability. I plan to make these changes in my large group projects in which students participate throughout the year. For example, my students form groups and create biomes in their study of ecosystems and plant/animal adaptations. When I form my groups this year, I will ask students to take on specific roles for the group, as well as produce a written piece following the completion of the hands-on project describing their involvement and contribution to the group’s effort and learning. This will make the group experience go more smoothly and be more beneficial for students.
I also love the idea of base groups! I am excited to create these groups at the beginning of the year by matching students randomly with 2-3 other students. For my 5th graders, the school year begins for many with a lot of challenges as they are learning to be much more responsible and independent. In having these groups, I can ask students to help each other to stay on track and work together to see that all in their group are successful. For example, one of the biggest struggles for 5th graders is to remember the new homework routines that take place in the mornings. At the beginning of the school year, having base groups check in with each other for 2-3 minutes to help each other remember to turn in homework, folders, etc. would be enormously helpful for many of my students, as well as help to build a sense of community.
Part D:
As I stated above, I am planning to provide more structure for my students in their formal groups to help them work together more successfully, as well as create base groups for my students. I have also been reminded from this chapter the importance of using cooperative groups in my classroom. I currently use informal grouping very often, but do shy away somewhat from formal groups. I think that this is due in part to some of my own experiences as a student working in collaborative groups that may not have been very positive, and the feeling of a need to have individual accountability from all students in large projects. However, I now better understand how important groups are for helping students to grow and learn, as demonstrated by the research cited in the reading. I think that with the changes that I mentioned above, I can implement formal groups more often in my classroom with more positive results.
C. The strategy that I will definitely use more often that was mentioned in this chapter is informal group organization. I’ve used pair-share effectively in the past but I’ve never used it throughout an entire lesson. I liked the lesson where Mr. Anderson conducted class by alternately reading for 10 minutes then asking a question to be answered in pairs and finally having the pairs write and hand in a summary of the most important information they learned. This lesson appealed to me for many reasons. It seems to go along with brain research around the amount of time a teacher should talk before having students process information. I also like the accountability and focus that asking a question about information that was just presented provides. I’ve often heard that having students verbalize something is one of the best ways for them to learn and remember and my experience is that this seems to be true. This informal group organization allows for students to verbalize regularly throughout class. I’ve found with some groups in a pair-share activity it is important to make sure both pairs are talking. At the end of class he had the pairs summarize and hand in their assignments, I might sometimes do that also. Other days I might end a similarly conducted class by throwing around a foam apple and having each group share with the whole class an important piece of information they learned without repeating information already shared by another group. I could require students to keep a record of what each group said and later hand them in as notes. I might start out the next lesson by having students journal for four minutes recalling as many important ideas from yesterdays lesson as they can.
D. This chapter made me think about how I establish my cooperative learning groups. I’ve almost always created groups based on some kind of criteria like making sure the groups were composed of varying ability levels having a high or low in each group, or making sure they weren’t friends who would spend to much time off task, etc. I haven’t done much grouping based on things like shoe color or birthday month, or other random categories. I tend to think the random choice would work well with groups of students who have strong skills but might be difficult with groups who struggle. I would be willing to try it and see how it works.
I agree with the research presented about groups that are structured poorly are an example of misusing cooperative learning groups. I’ve found that for cooperative learning groups to work I have to do a good job of structuring the assignment. How I structure an assignment depends a bit on the students needs. With struggling students that means teaching fundamental facts like what it looks like to sit and work in a group, assigning specific roles for group members and providing an individual assessment of contribution and effort. Especially in my English 9 classes I have to have an assessment that includes only talking to people in your group or I can have chaos in class. If I take the time to train students on the procedures for cooperative learning, it seems to pay off. Having a rubric that defines exactly what they will be assessed on also seems to provide structure for the group.
Organizing cooperative groups into base or long-term groups is something that I’ve never done. It makes sense that this type of organization might increase the students feeling of belonging to the class. In high school, where students see so many different teachers and classmates in a day, it might be even more important to try to establish that feeling of belonging. I like this idea and will try to use it in my English 9 where students seem to struggle with transitioning from junior high to high school.
Colleen - I agree that students need to be "trained" in the correct group behaviors in order to avoid chaos and wasted time in the classroom. This is an area on which I am going to place more focus at the beginning of the year, possibly teaching a few very specific lessons on behaviors that are acceptable in group work scenarios.
Thanks for your comments Cassandra & Heidi. I think that cooperative learning is probably one of Marzano’s strategies that we all used possibly more than others. This chapter provides us with some strategies to provide some structure. I’m glad you both also loved the idea of base groups. Base groups serve many different purposes, so how you form them depends on what you want to use them for. You can decide the length that you want to keep the base group for; perhaps it's a month, grading period, or all year. What they are designed for is to give the students a support system, build camaraderie and to create a sense of teamwork. They are suitable for many different purposes in all grades. The benefit of using base groups is that students are able to give each other feedback, identify strengths and weaknesses, practice for oral presentations, or clarify misconceptions with students they have come to know and trust.
C. For a several week long project on planning a board game review project in my beginner high school French class, I chose to use formal grouping when it came time to organize the cooperative learning groups. Each member of the groups had a role: designer, researcher, project manager, and assistant project manager. The designer designed the layout and other graphical aspects of the game. The researcher put together the content of the game and what information should be covered to best review the chapter(s) in question. The project manager (and the assistant project manager if the other was absent) was in charge of the overall project coordination. Both managers assisted the designer and researcher where necessary. This worked out very well, as the kids seemed to be comfortable with their roles (I chose according to their interests and abilities) and the work that they were doing. The end product was wonderful and useful for revising before the semester exam (the kids first played their own games and then swapped) and they really enjoyed the process too. They were given a rubric ahead of time that delineated the criteria that they would be assessed with.
D. There are a couple of things that I would change about how I use cooperative learning in my classroom. First, I would try to use a wider variety of criteria to group students. I really like the idea of pets (as an example of interests) as a way to group kids. It’s good to vary the groupings to ensure that students get to work with different kids and have a variety of opportunities to learn. Also, I would like to incorporate a larger use of formal and base groupings in my classroom. As a language teacher, I often use informal groupings for dialogues, etc. But I can see how the other forms of groupings offer great chances for kids to feel like a part of the class and to feel more supported than in informal groupings. I now understand better that as teachers we don’t have to feel like we always have to do cooperative learning groups in our classrooms. The anecdote about Ms. Mandrell is very true…sometimes we just like to work on our own and be allowed to learn by ourselves.
Gina – Your board game project sounds like a fantastic learning experience! It also sounds like you have some great ideas on how to incorporate some of the other types of cooperative learning styles such as formal and base groupings into your instructional structures…best of luck!
Chapter 7:
Part C:
A very interesting chapter to read because in 3rd grade we did a lot of ability grouping and found it to be more effective. But after reading this chapter it made me think a little more about the positive and negatives of ability grouping. The one strategy that I really enjoyed reading about is base groups. The base groups are really appealing to me because I am always trying to find ways to create that sense of community in my classroom and I think this is another way to do it.
Part D:
The way I might change how I use cooperative learning in my classroom is to do a little more thinking behind how I choose my groups, using formal, informal and base groups.
The one thing I understand better is that when using ability grouping I need to do it sparingly. Also, I realized that I need to keep in mind my students of low ability when ability grouping because they will actually benefit from mixed groups. There is a time and place for ability grouping and I need to use it when it can be most effective.
C. I like routines when it comes to my lesson writing and how the kids interface in my classroom. They make it easier for me to remember how to write the lesson plan according to best practices and easier for my kids to feel capable and competent when trying to meet my expectations. The informal, formal and base groups concept was a routine is see as very useful. In the past, I grouped much more off the top of my head, so to speak and often seemed to group kids in ways that to them were not satisfactory, since it seems to be my natural inclination to follow patterns when grouping. This sort of subconscious habit I had meant too often kids who wanted to be together never seemed to get their chance to work with a partner they preferred or were too often stuck with group members they found irritating.
D. 1. How might I change how I use cooperative learning in my classroom?
As I stated above, I intend to use informal groupings “ turn to your partner for quick, reflective activities at the end of drama classes. For formal grouping, I plan to alternate with random card draws, with students’ names on it for special tasks and for long term projects such as scene work. Base groups will be used for long-term self-reflective and evaluative activities such as portfolio compilation and peer directing, or design work for short plays. For the base groups, I think I will keep them to three kids next year and give one kid each trimester (we use trimesters here) an option to form a new group with other students who have the option that trimester to opt out. I will assign the rotation of who gets to move at the beginning of the year with a three sided dice to keep it fair and random of who gets the privilege and when.
2. What is something you now understand better about cooperative learning?
Homogenous vs. `heterogeneous grouping is one of those debates you have with colleges so often and everyone seems to want to be definitive. Almost always, teachers are in opposite camps and equally convinced of their beliefs in one or the other. I look forward to helping settle the argument by pointing out that you do get a .09 benefit when you group together high achievers but that, that .09 only converts to a 4% or so improvement in work. While on the other hand, hetero grouping gives low achievers an ES of .51, which translates to a 19% gain for them. So it seems that the answer is in most cases, hetero groups do the most good for the most students, but that each class is different and you have to take it on a case-by-case and year-by-year basis.
Chuck Camp
Assignment #7
C.
About four or five years ago, I had one particular year in which class work and homework check-in was really problematic nearly every week. My teaching partner was experiencing this too and she came up with what she calls Study Buddies. Two or three students would check each other to see if they had all their work finished and if each piece was complete before check-in. It completely altered the usual Friday tension. This evolved into checking each other for staying on schedule for larger projects and if you can find the right combinations of pairs or trios they really do support and encourage each other to where they are all experiencing more success and develop friendships through the year. This sounds like Base Groups. The Informal Grouping shares similar steps with Reciprocal Teaching. When choosing the literature groups, in which we use novel sets, I usually read the book talk on six or seven books that fit into the unit we are currently studying and I have my students write down their top three choices. Often I am able to give them all their first choice and then the groups have kids that are interested in the same book. More often than not, the groups work out well.
D.
I suppose everyone taking this course is focused on best practices and this chapter highlights best practices. I know that one of my Achilles heels is not always taking care to be structured enough ahead of time and trying to fly by the seat of my pants. Another is that I’m guilty of using groups too often. I need to monitor myself in my usage of groups.
C. The classroom practice that I have been using and will continue to use is the informal groups. I use this during Reading Workshop as part of my mini lessons. During the mini lesson, I read aloud and model the teaching point. After modeling the teaching point, I have the students practice the skill by turning and talking to their neighbor. While they are talking, I walk around and listen to the different partner groups share. Sometimes I have a few partner groups share their ideas with the whole class. Informal groups are a great way for me to check student understanding.
D. Something I better understand about cooperative learning is the importance of keeping the number of students in a group to a manageable number. Also, I better understand that it is definitely okay to reorganize groups if they feel too large. I want to continue to use a variety of cooperative learning groups.
Something I would like to change about cooperative learning in my classroom is to figure out how to add base groups. I haven’t quite figured out how to do this with a schedule that has students switching classes every 45 minutes. Maybe if the whole 6th grade team took on base groups, and, maybe, if we had the groups meet for the first 5 minutes of 1st period and the last 5 minutes of 8th period, it could work. Problem is it would be very unlikely that the 1st period base groups would be the same as the 8th period base groups. However, that could be beneficial. Students might get to know more students if the base groups from 1st period were different from the 8th period base groups. What do you think?
Thanks Rhett, Jeff, Chuck, and Heidi for your comments about grouping your students. I think we all agree that the most important piece when thinking about grouping our students is variety, and this was a great chapter full of examples to guide our groupings with flexibility. Have fun trying out some of these new groupings in the future!
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