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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 D to the blog. We’re trying to make the blog more user-friendly and easier to read. 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.)
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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9 comments:
I learned from the reading that cooperative learning is most effective in groupings of 3-4 students. When I have cooperative groupings in my classroom, I almost always have students work in pairs just because it seems the easiest to manage. I had never considered that adding a student or 2 would be more effective. Our district recently adopted the Bridges math curriculum and it has a lot of work in pairs. I really like seeing students learning from each other during math time. I see how powerful it is for students to learn from one another. I wonder how I could make it so students did more work in slightly larger groupings. I also do a lot of informal groupings when I do my writing mini-lesson each day. Before I have the students go off to write, I have them think about the day’s objective and have them share what they are going to write with a partner. I believe this time for sharing is valuable because it helps them to organize their thinking, builds communication skills, students get to practice listening and helping one another, and it fosters a sense of community because everyone has a voice and is a contributing member of the group. After doing the reading I would like to try having students share in groups of 3-4 instead of in pairs because the effect size is greater when students are in groups of 3-4.
I know that cooperative learning is important, and I like to use it in my teaching, but sometimes it is really difficult to get second graders to be effective when grouped together to complete a task. I know that giving each student a specialized task within the group can help to bring more effective results, but that is not always easy to plan and implement. However, I do work to put my frustrations aside and I make sure to include a cooperative learning component to each of my content units. I do enjoy seeing what kind of projects they can produce when joined together for different lessons.
The most important learning I gained from this chapter was to keep group size small. I like that this was proven in research and I also enjoyed reading the example of breaking the groups down in the chapter. This fall I was teaching a new science unit on magnets. I created several investigations that involved the class working in small size groups. I took care to build my groups for behavior and ability, taught cooperative learning expectations, and thought that we would be off and running in no time. What I found is that there were many squabbles about how to divide the work, many times when I would find students just playing with the materials and not working to complete the tasks, and things were not going as I had planned. I found myself completely frustrated and just pushing to get students to finish the work so that we could move onto the next job.
After reading this chapter, it made me realize that the trouble with the groups might not have been the group dynamics, but rather just the size of the groups. Due to the limited materials and my large class size this year, my groups were sized at 6-8 students per group. Now I understand that the group size was probably much to big to be effective, especially early in the year. Next year, when I teach this unit, I will have to get more creative in my planning of these inquiry groups. I will still have limited materials, but I will see if there is a way that I can get the group sizes smaller. I am looking forward to seeing how it goes with this new information.
I set a goal a few years back to make sure that I am giving my class a chance to use the informal grouping or pair-share at least twice a day. I am good about always remembering to put this in during my literacy mini-lessons, but sometimes it is hard to squeeze it in during the rest of the day. I have found since making this goal that it has made me much more effective at getting in cooperative learning each day. It will come time to teach my writing lesson at the end of the day and realize that I need to be sure to get in that second pair-share during that last lesson.
I loved the idea of the using a base grouping strategy. Math instruction has been really frustrating this year due to the spread of ability and the large class size. I have looked at trying to implement small group instruction, but I don’t have enough time to effectively try to get small group meetings to occur and to be sure that I am getting enough instructional minutes to each student. This chapter made me wonder if a base-grouping cooperative learning system might be a creative way to help make math instruction more effective. I think I may look at this strategy for an upcoming unit and see how it could be done with my class.
This chapter helped to show me that even it is brings hassles, research has proven that cooperative learning is the most effective and is an important part of good education. I will keep working to bring more effective cooperative learning opportunities into my classroom.
I started using the base grouping method in math this week and so far it has been going well. The real tell will be when the unit is finished and the assessments are graded.
Molly,
The first time I read this text I was also surprised to learn that the most effective groupings contained 3-4 students. :D
I am a huge fan of giving students time to think/plan/share before writing. Well said!
We'll be interested to see how your math assessments turn out. If you're able to, let us know.
Hope,
Your plans to have smaller groups should produce better results. I would take the time in the beginning of the year to clearly state your expectations, model and role play for at least a couple of weeks. Even though this is large investment in time at the beginning of the year it should help make the rest of the year run smoother when you do break into cooperative groups. One other idea you might try is to ask the students for ideas of what should be done if someone or the class isn't performing to the stated expectations. Often students have great ideas and suggestions and can be harder on themselves than we would be.
I find that cooperative grouping is a difficult strategy for me to employ. Part of that comes from the nature of my current role in the classroom. I work with very small, homogeneous groups of students for very short periods of time. Most of our time together is spent on direct reading instruction, with periods for group and individual practice. When I think about the research, I’m right on track with my group sizes, but completely off base as far as the make-up of each group goes. However, my definition of cooperative grouping changed a little bit after reading the text, and I think I can see ways to bring in some elements of this powerful teaching strategy. I appreciated the description of different types of groups: informal, formal, and base groups. I think I already use the informal grouping strategy to some degree when I have students participate in shared reading or practice with a partner. One thing that I need to work on is making sure that I’m pairing students in different ways so that, as much as possible, they have the opportunity to work with students of different abilities. As I thought about it, I think my groups have a lot of characteristics of effective cooperative groups, despite the fact that they’re not heterogeneous and they’re usually not working to complete a project. I really emphasize the ideas of positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, and some group processing. The difference, though, between my classroom and the way that cooperative learning is presented in the text, is that I feel I have to be part of the group. This might be one of those strategies that I just have to hope is being utilized more fully in the context of the regular classroom.
• How might I change how use cooperative learning in my classroom?
Cooperative groupings are an instructional strategy that most teachers believe is a valuable and impactful strategy to use. Even though we know that cooperative groups are important, how to implement, organize, assess, and manage cooperative groupings presents many challenges for most educators. They can either be the greatest instruction strategy you’ve tried, or the can go terribly wrong and you will run as far and as fast as you can from the strategy.
Currently in my class I use, as Marzano refers to them, informal groups. I use informal groups 4 to 5 times per week for a variety of activities. One example is partner reads, and another is pair-share writing. These groups are typically student created. I think they have been valuable and I don’t want to forget about using informal groups.
What I would like to change about cooperative groupings in my class is to develop the use of more formal groupings and base groupings to maximize the effectiveness of grouping students. Developing formal and base groups, I believe, takes a great deal of organization, planning, teaching, and preparation – so I believe this is why I have avoided their use over the past couple of years. It has not been a priority of mine, but I think the time is right. The first formal cooperative grouping I would like to develop would be heterogeneous reading squads where students would read together at least one time per week.
• What is something you now understand better about cooperative learning?
After reading chapter 7, “Cooperative Learning”, from Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works, I better understand the impact of grouping students homogenously and heterogeneously and how this can impact different learners in different ways. One may assume that grouping with the same ability level would not have a negative impact on their learning, and it may actually alleviate some frustration. Actually, its quite the opposite.
Knowing this more clearly now, and seeing the data to support the practice of grouping students heterogeneously, I’m going to make a conscious effort to create groups with mixed ability levels.
I thought that I already understood and used cooperative groupings in my class until I read this chapter. I didn't understand all the differences between informal, formal, and base groups and the research behind different groupings. I realize that I use lots of informal, think-pair-share, types of groups. I use partnering a lot with reading and occasionally use groups of 2-4 for math practice games. When I have parent volunteers, we also do station rotation for thematic units. Sometimes I create the groups and other times the students create the groups. My experience is that using larger groups, without involving an adult leader, can be challenging for the children to stay on task. It takes until Spring for them to be able to self-manage and not play. I agree with Brad, that the implementation is the tricky part. I am a huge advocate of cooperative learning, but feel that my age group creates some limitations. Does anyone have specific classroom management tips for grouping Kindergartners?
One thing that I have difficulties wrapping my brain around is the idea that homogenously grouping children is not in the children's best interest. I can see how heterogeneously grouping children for some things would be of great benefit to the children's learning. Literacy instruction expands beyond reading groups and there are many ways to utilize both formal and informal groups. However, I find that grouping children according to ability in reading groups is the most effective use of time. I would be interested in seeing how grouping a reader at a second grade level and a child who does not know their letters or sounds together would work. My district uses ability grouping in math and reading across the district. Am I the only one questioning this idea? What is the research on when to ability group and when not to?
I do this in my lab work and find that it works well for motivated students, but the others tend to ride on the coat tails of the go getters and need a nuge to get them going. I find that if I step in and question the group on the task and target the floaters it seems to bring tem back into the group.
Sarah,
Are you able to push in in your role to the regular classroom and support the teacher with a project using cooperative learning? I know you can't do this regularly, but perhaps if it fits with your student's goals and the teachers objectives it might be good to try.
Brad, I was also surprised by the data regarding grouping students of the same level. Good luck with creating more mixed ability groupings.
Raquel,
At your level it takes a lot of practice and modeling. I'd say keep at it and think of it more as you are getting your students ready for first grade. The more experience they have with it now, the more successful it will be later for them.
Randy, thanks for your comment. Even at the high school level, students still need teachers to monitor and keep the groups on task. It is not a time for the teachers to be planning lessons or checking email. :D
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