ALL PARTICIPANTS PLEASE
READ THE NOTE BELOW!!!
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?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I was once told that the word “Group” was exclusive while the word “Team” was inclusive, so my vocabulary choice reflects my philosophy.
I use cooperative learning daily in my classroom and would have to agree that teams of 6 are too large. I would agree that 4-5 is the best size as a student could be absent and the team could still function well. If a team is only 3 members and one is missing, the team can really suffer. That is what I have found in math and social studies. Over the past 7 year of using cooperative learning in my classroom. I have learned through trial and error some things that reading this chapter first would have made much simpler. I could not help but think of literacy circles from the days of my student teaching. Each student as a job, brilliant! I have team leaders, but beyond that my math teams are without jobs. I have been making different job titles and am looking forward to trying them out this year.
I use my teams daily and have in the past rotated members each chapter or unit using the grade book, much like a draft roster, to form new heterogeneous teams for the following chapter or unit. I tried a few homogeneous teams but my cooperative learning and working together suffered in the lower groups to such a drastic extent that I have never gone back to them again. This I am planning to change as I like the sound of a more “formal” team of students working together, developing a sense of belonging, and being a part of something longer than a couple weeks.
I assign points to attendance, correct classroom behavior, materials brought to class, completion of practice, participation in class, proficiencies met, and level of proficiency on post tests: meets, exceeds, and mastery. I use deductions for blurts and other things that happen in class that I disapprove of such as rude talk, arguing, bodily sounds that cause disruption, etc. I do use extrinsic motivation for teams to provide a sense of competition and drive to the more competitive students in the class that might not be motivated by math; they just want to win. It works. I have also pitted the boys against the girls in a “split classroom” to see if gender would motivate them to work harder; to bad I did it in a spelling class. The boys still had fun but the girls won in a landslide. In short, I enjoy using teams in my classroom on a daily basis and probably would stop teaching if I was told I could not use team-learning in my classroom.
Week Seven: Cooperative Learning
I really enjoyed the “history” at the beginning of the chapter on the practice of grouping tracing back to 1867. I found it very interesting to think about how classrooms were once created and the positive and negative consequences of this type of grouping and labeling. We spend days at the end of the year creating classrooms that are well balanced so that each students needs are met and one teacher doesn’t end up with a classroom of all the “tough” kids, while another teacher has all the great kids with supportive parents. This is creating cooperative groups to a certain extent I think. On the same note creating groups of students as mentioned in the book where one group gets more in depth than the other group doesn’t seem appropriate either. Our job is to give equal education to all of our students. It is so amazing that things didn’t used to be that way.
I love using cooperative learning groups but definitely understood the section stating that they can be overused. The effectiveness is definitely eliminated and not every student works to their fullest potential if they think that someone else is always going to be there to pick up the slack for them. I also agree with the size of the group having a big effect. Groups cannot be to big or it is to hard to manage or to small because there is not enough students to get the job done. In kindergarten I do seat students in cooperative groups, so to say, for table work but the groups are not used in a cooperative group manner until almost the end of the year when the students are more capable of working in such a manner with each other. Then we work for table point for behavior and play games to reinforce learning. They are seated and moved monthly heterogeneously so that there is always a “role model” at each table group.
I am looking forward to next year moving to second grade and being able to get into more work with cooperative groups than I can do in kindergarten. There was so many great concepts and learning criteria in this chapter I am excited to be able to branch out and try some new ideas along this topic. I know that for myself I definitely like to work in cooperative groups. It is a great experience to be able to bounce ideas off each other and to get different perspectives from working with a diverse group.
Making a Difference: Classroom Instruction That Works
Assignment 7: Cooperative Learning
I use cooperative learning a fair amount in my classroom, after this reading, perhaps too much. I almost always heterogeneously group my students, sometimes intentionally and sometimes I pull sticks, and I even occasionally, later in the year, let kids group themselves. Previously I had learned about intentionally teaching group work skills. I would give groups a fairly easy task to complete, but one that required discussion and decision making, with no further directions. Inevitably, groups had problems, which led us to a discussion about what kinds of things might need to happen in order for a group to work more effectively. The kids would brainstorm ideas and we would post 3 to 6 “rules” to work on. I would them have them try to complete the task again and we would again discuss how things went. I believe it takes a group, of any age and ability, a little while to learn how to work together, so I would have kids work for several weeks completing different, fairly easy tasks. I would always revisit the “rules” before sending kids off to complete a cooperative learning task, but I don’t think I really check back in with them about how it is working – unless there was a problem.
I really liked the idea in this book of establishing a base group that would be maintained throughout a trimester or year to check in with at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. I think that would really help build a sense of community in a classroom. I would have kids work in other groups too, but I think I need to check in more often with how the groups are working and trying to help them problem solve. I think I often sit back and let them work out problems for themselves, which is good too, but I think I sometimes wait too long. This will be my first year teaching third graders, so I think I might have to do even more explicit teaching of cooperative group work skills. I also think I have been making my groups too big – 5-7 kids, I need to make them smaller.
After reading this chapter, I am a little concerned about my district requirement to run ability-grouped small group reading lessons. The research presented in this books indicates that really isn’t very effective, especially with the lower kids – but guess what, they get ability grouped for reading twice, once in my room as required by the district, and usually again for Special Education or Title I services. I would like to see more research on this!
Sam, I love it. "Team!" Good point about an absent student, I've never thought of that before.
Margaret I agree that you should be able to get more in depth with your second graders. Good luck! Will you be having some of your previous student? I bet they will be excited to have you again and you will have the benefit of knowing some of your students as learners from Kindergarten.
Louise,
Great point to explicitly teach the procedures and expectations. Posting the rules that the students developed and referring to them each time you worked in groups (or teams :D) is something we should all be doing. I agree with you that I think it takes a little bit before the group starts working together optimally.
Regie Routman and The Sisters support strategy grouping and I believe they have some data in their books about the benefits of grouping this way. You might want to Google "Strategy Grouping vs. Ability grouping and choose scholarly articles on Google to get some research.
Yes! Over a third of my second graders I had in kindergarten! A lot of their brothers and sisters were supposed to be in my kindergarten class this year but I get them instead - yeah!
That's wonderful! I'm sure the parents are excited as well. What a great way to start off the year with students that you know and who know your expectations and style. :D
Post a Comment