Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative efforts result in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members: * gain from each other's efforts. (Your success benefits me and my success benefits you.) * recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all …show more content…
Individual & Group Accountability ( no hitchhiking! no social loafing) * Keeping the size of the group small. The smaller the size of the group, the greater the individual accountability may be. * Giving an individual test to each student. * Randomly examining students orally by calling on one student to present his or her group's work to the teacher (in the presence of the group) or to the entire class. * Observing each group and recording the frequency with which each member-contributes to the group's work. * Assigning one student in each group the role of checker. The checker asks other group members to explain the reasoning and rationale underlying group answers. * Having students teach what they learned to someone else. | | 4. Interpersonal & Small-Group Skills * Social skills must be taught: * Leadership * Decision-making * Trust-building * Communication * Conflict-management skills | | 5. Group Processing * Group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships * Describe what member actions are helpful and not helpful * Make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change | | Class Activities that use Cooperative LearningMost of these structures are developed by Dr. Spencer Kagan and his associates at Kagan Publishing and
(Woolfolk, 2013) talks about Cooperative learning, which is learning by working and talking to others. This allows participants to engage in discussion, elaborate, question and expand on their knowledge with each other. This can take place within group work, paired work and between teacher and pupil. Vygotsky’s theory suggest that for learning to be successful during social interaction; reasoning, comprehension, critical thinking takes place and then is internalised. Cooperative learning provides the purposes for scaffolding to take place to help advance learning. (Woolfolk,
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.
Secondly, the intervention goal is to improve students’ comfortability and motivation to work together to co-create knowledge. To promote group work and collaboration, cooperative learning will be used so students can work together to make sense of new information and solve problems. The first step is to ensure that the students understand and believe that the classroom is a safe and a nonjudgmental environment which will be accomplished by having students at the beginning of the schoolyear introduce themselves, provide their interests, and state what they would like to learn from the class. The teacher will establish pre-assigned, diverse, semester-length, groups for students to complete group work. Once students are acquainted with each other, they will engage in team-building exercises pertinent to a particular American history topic being learned to help develop rapport (e.g., each group member teaches each other something new about the topic). Overall, these steps will create a cooperative learning environment that will initiate motivation and comfortability.
First, cooperative learning is a kind of group work. Learners have to work together in small groups between two and six members.
After completing the group task of preparing a presentation on, transferring individual facilitation skills into a group work setting I will critically reflect upon my own participation. I will evaluate my self-awareness while working in the group, as well as those around me. The way that I personally dealt with any issues that arose within the group and how that affected the group dynamics. I will also briefly discuss the roles in which each member of the group took and how role allocation affected, the group dynamics and the working relationships. Finally I will evaluate my work having discussed it with my fellow group members.
Cooperative learning is more than just letting students sit next to each other and complete an assignment together. If implemented the wrong way cooperative learning can become ineffective for the students, therefor stunting their ability to grow as learners. A cooperative learning environment will exist if groups are structured in a way that group member’s co-ordinate activities to facilitate one another’s learning (Van Dat, 2013). In order to achieve this kind of environment there are five elements that must be present in a cooperative learning classroom: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, interpersonal & social skills, and group processing. Let’s look further into these give elements to have a better understanding of cooperative learning. In order for cooperative learning to be successful students need to be able to reflect on what they learned as a group to ensure all members have an
Cooperative learning will be a method I use in my classroom. I believe that in a cooperative learning group a student can learn socialization skills and how to work with others. This goes along with the pragmatic/progressive philosophy that children learn by doing. The progressivism teaching style also includes the incorporation of problem-solving and critical thinking techniques. I want my students to learn to think for themselves and be able to function in society. At the same time, I will be a fellow learner myself and
Cooperative learning should be considered the natural progression of the American education system. Traditional education techniques place students in a competitive atmosphere. Cooperative learning requires students to work together to achieve success. A democratic method for a democratic society. Cooperative learning does not allow for a single winner, instead through group efforts, each student’s strengths help the collective achieve success. This paper will address the history of cooperative learning, along with its social, academic, and teacher benefits. Most importantly, it will highlight the positive effects of cooperative learning techniques upon students of all abilities.
In addition to the effects mentioned above, one more thing that students can be impressed by cooperative learning is developing their self-confidence. When a student experiences group success acquired by his or her cooperation, or when he/she answers questions made by other members, he/she feels as a qualified member of the group and this causes development of self-confidence. In the following paragraphs it’s expressed how cooperative learning can be effective in educational systems.
Question 3: Group work skills: Reviewing group work skills allowed the writer to understand the reason why these leadership skills are key in supporting members and creating cohesion. The writer plans to use these skills in the current field placement. Some skills, such as requesting information, and partializing can also be used in individual sessions and when working with families. The hope is to continue practicing the skills to master them. The writer will continue seeking consultation and feedback from the field instructor and group co-workers. Finally, the writer will observe group workers to continue obtaining additional group skills to use in social work practice. The following are vital leadership skills that all group workers should practice:
Cooperative Learning is a method of teaching and learning in which students work together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. In Cooperative Learning, students work together in small groups on a structured activity in order to accomplish shared learning goals. (Abass)
On cooperative learning help in viewing the teammates as responsible, 41.7% strongly agree, 33.3% agree as 25% were neutral. This also indicates that cooperative learning is of great importance in creating the sense of responsibility among the students in the schools. This makes a student come out of the institutions with a sense of responsibility on their later areas of life.
Some people prefer to the learning atmosphere where they can discuss the problem with some people. This type of learning is called cooperative learning. Cooperative learning not only avoids the learners’ unilateral acceptance of knowledge, but also promotes them positive thought on problem. It requires that the learner discuss with others at a humble and sincere attitude, or it isn’t so successful and effective that the learners will feel a waste of time. So it can build them good characters, such as respectful, helpful and receptive
Stevens and Slavin (1995) explain the use of a “cognitive apprenticeship” in which students of different achievement levels work together to learn new material. Students with higher-level academic abilities are able to use their mastery of the concepts to give explanations to the other students, whereas, the lower students are able to use the scaffolding of their fellow classmates as a comprehension technique to understand the material. Cooperative learning is not always looked at as the best teaching method.
When referring back to the topic of cooperative learning technique, a lot of efforts and steps were taken throughout the previous years, and there are still a lot of works that can be done on it too.