Cooperative Learning

“Alright,” the teacher says to the students, “I’m going to number all of you off into groups. Each group will read a section from the textbook and become experts on that section. Then, each group will teach the rest of the class what they learned from their reading.” This is an instruction common to the classrooms in the United States. More and more is the pedagogy of public education leaning in favor of team-based activities, projects, and learning. Group work is generally seen as an ultimately beneficial way to teach students, but this may be somewhat of a fallacy. The emphasis on group-based learning in public schools causes a multitude of problems.

The teacher prepares the students to operate in a small group together. This practice can enhance the student’s cooperative learning skills.

An intentional group takes more planning on the teacher, but the final result is more positive. The intentional group will have a teacher goal that will be arrived at and resolved. A social group is also used as an intentional grouping to allow for the shy student to be paired with the more outgoing student and they are given learning activities to increase the social interactions. This also allows for a model student to be placed with an underachiever and they, in turn can teach them to accept their learning situation. A number of small groups could address one topic, just four different subcategories, and pull back together to finalize their conclusions. Teachers are given a chance to utilize the personalities and skills levels to advance the group learning experience.

These small groups usually consisted of three to five students. In these small groups, we developed effective communication skills in order to accomplish the tasks at hand. In some activities, verbal communication was not allowed. We had to work together as a team to overcome that challenge. Once the small group challenges were completed, we moved onto larger group challenges. Here, the students within the groups used their relationships and communication skills to build trust. I say trust because the upcoming challenges were part of the high ropes course. Here students had to rely on the strength and ability of each member to complete the task. These activities were both physically and mentally challenging. We had to work as a team to overcome the fear of heights and accomplish tasks that seemed impossible. Finally, once this series of events was completed we moved on to the whole group events. I specifically noted one as the "Asking for Help Maze." In this scenario we were all blindfolded and led to the beginning of a maze. We could only navigate by following the rope in front of us. The trick is, is that the maze never ended, there was no

As a pre-service teacher it is important to shift the mindset of students from thinking of getting the right answer and instead encourage critical thinking. The purpose of group learning activities is to help struggling students.To properly implement heterogeneous groups in my teaching I will make sure to articulate my goals during group work, and include academic objectives. I want to make sure that students achieve social skills that they may want to develop. It is critical to helping groups get started therefore I will explain the group’s task. I will explain how the task involves individual accountability, and how they will be assessed throughout the process. During group work monitoring and regularly observing group interactions and progress, by circulating during group work is something I would do as a teacher. Circulating during group work will make it easy to observe problems, allowing me to intervene and help students move forward on the task. I think getting different perspective is important and I plan on discussing with future colleagues what works best and what curriculum we are finding more

With the heterogeneous groups the level of discussion and cooperative work is increased, providing benefits for every student partaking. According to Paul Burden and David Byrd (2012), “Having students work in groups generally has a positive effect on their achievement when compared to their work as individuals.” Small-group work and discussions allows for students to improve their communication skill, cooperation skills, and gain new insight and understanding from their peers in a way that could not be achieved working alone.

This relates to our small group class very closely because it takes all the people in the group to achieve the goals of the group, not one person alone can achieve the goal successfully, and if they do it wont be as good as it should have been with all the members participating in the objective.

A strategy that worked well throughout the lesson was the idea to have the students grouped into five engineering groups in order to have one teacher at each group at all times, assisting if needed.

Belair Elementary School has four hundred twenty-five students, of those students forty-four have IEPs (Individualized Education Plan) or 10.3 percent. One instructional strategy that I could implement for these students is that of small group work. Small group work has many benefits such as the students will receive support from others in the group. So they are not just doing independent work but learning from others and interacting with others. Also, group work focuses on specific skills of those students. With that I could match instruction to each students’ needs and have them work with students who will help them learn. The teacher can place students in specific groups based on their specific groups so they will learn from the group and

There will be four people in each group and each person will have a job, there will be a leader, speaker, reader, and notetaker. After modeling each role, I will allow the students to create groups with four people in each group. At each table will be a discussion question or a project set up for each group. Once students are in groups, I will have the students decide who will be in each role. I will then have the students begin reading the group discussion question or begin the group project. As the students are working I will be walking around and encouraging the students to dig deeper to explore a concept. By teaching the students how to work together in groups with the different roles will ensure that each group member is evenly contributing to the group and teaching the students important skills for working collaboratively for the future.

In both small and larger groups to function effectively in a course context, each student must attend to both the process and climate by which they accomplish their tasks. When working in a small groups I give more efficient ideas than working in a larger groups, this is because I find it easier to work with fewer people. Having a healthy climate and effective communication skills when working in a group situation is critical. I work very will in-group situations, and have gained many skills in social interactions.

There are several reasons why cooperative learning works well. The idea that students learn more by doing something active than by simply watching and listening has long been known to both cognitive psychologists and effective teachers (Bransford, et. al., 2000) and cooperative learning is by its nature an active method. Beyond that, cooperation enhances learning in several ways. Weak students working individually are likely to give up when they get stuck; working cooperatively, they keep going. Strong students faced with the task of explaining and clarifying material to weaker students often find gaps in their own understanding and fill them in. Students working alone may tend to delay completing assignments or skip them altogether, but when they know that others are counting on them, they are motivated to do the work in a timely manner.

“Group work is a teaching strategy that promotes academic achievement and socialization”(Frykedal, Chiriac, 2011). This method is often used since allow individuals to combine their skills with the intention to achieve a mutual goal. To be efficient when working with a group, individuals have the responsibility to understand and respect others preferences and

Describe the strategy and its purpose with your students, and provide guidelines for discussions that will take place.  Explain to students that they will (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question;(2) pair with a partner and discuss the topic or question; and (3) share ideas with the rest of the

The first stragtey to discuss is her use of effective groupings arrangements. For instance, students are part of a whole group lesson, small group, cooperative activity, and partner work. First, Ms. Sullivan starts the lesson with the whole group seated on the carpet. This is when she introduces both the content and language objectives, discusses the target vocabulary, and explicitly reviews the lesson targets using visuals and modeling. Next, students work in partner groups using a “think, pair, share” strategy. To illustrate, students work together in partner work to discuss how they solve problems. At the end of the lesson, students also work collaboratively in a small group to complete a graphic organizer to reflect on what they learned. These grouping strategies are supported by Lev Vygotsky’s Constructivism theory. According to Vygotsky, discourse and interaction are channels for learning