|
Are we REALLY doing Cooperative Learning in our Classrooms?A lot of teachers THINK they're doing cooperative learning. They say they ask students to turn and talk or work together during math time. But many teachers have pretty mixed feelings about how well their "cooperative learning" works. You hear them say things like:
"I put them together but the kids are always arguing! They get crazy without the structure! One kid ends up doing all the work and the other kid just sits there! It's really boring for one kid but too hard for another." If your idea of cooperative learning is like most teachers, it's no wonder that you give up on having students work in teams. |
Do you know what kind of work is going on in your classroom? |
"THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT PUTTING STUDENTS INTO GROUPS." |
Group Work
Does this look familiar? Group work often ends up looking like this because kids simply don't know how to work together.
Which is not to say group work is always bad! It's just unpredictable. Kids might not trust each other so they won't take risks. They might want to hide from contributing or take over all the work. Perhaps they have a conflict and can't figure out how to resolve it! However, with some simple tweaks, you can turn most group work into organized cooperative learning! |
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning activities are organized and structured so that every student has an important role to play.
They are designed to create equity and engagement, but these don't happen spontaneously. Students need to work together for a common goal. They need to be accountable to the group or the teacher. Participation should be monitored for equality and differentiated accordingly. Students in a team need to trust and like each other, and lastly, they need explicit instruction on social skills and teamwork, Only with all of these things in place will group work turn into cooperative learning, what ___ called the most extensively researched teaching approach in the world. |
You May Be Doing Group Work If... |
You May Be Doing Cooperative Learning If... |
-Students are trying to talk over each other |
- Students are taking turns listening, talking, and responding |
- One student's voice drowns out all the others |
- Students are asking for the ideas of everyone in their team |
- There is a HUGE gap in understanding when you assess kids individually |
- The gap between student understanding is not very wide, and the lower kids achieve far beyond expectations. |
- You see a student opting out, being ignored, or acting discouraged |
- You see students actively encouraging everyone to help out in some way |
- There are only a couple kids talking at a time |
- Most of the class is actively engaged in discussion, inquiry, and questioning |
- Teams are competing to outdo other teams or even other teammates to get a reward, prize, or best grade |
- Teams are working together to help each other understand deeply and learn the most they can |
- One student does all the work and the rest slack off and reap in the benefits |
- Every student needs to work equally hard to justify and prove their individual learning |