preview

Essay on Cooperative Learning ( Johnson and Johnson, 2006)

Better Essays

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

Get Access