Cooperative+Learning

Cooperative Learning
 * Read and Reflect:**

Students need directions to follow and taught how to learn cooperatively in the classroom. The essential requirement is either a diverse group of learning abilities or the students need experience in the topic they are collaborating on. I plan to use more cooperative learning with my students. I will instruct them to create a wiki page and share ideas with each other using a nutrition facts lesson.

Questions Page 162 ~ Handbook


 * __1. What is my purpose for using cooperative learning in the classroom?__**

In the past I have used cooperative learning in my classroom to get students to share and think about what they know about a topic. This collaborative experience shows them how to work together to accomplish a common goal. Parts of the assignment can be divided into different jobs and assigned to students to work on to complete a final project. Students who struggle can work with students who can help them in the learning process more closely than if they had to do it all by themselves.


 * __2. What kind of cooperative learning activities do I use with my students?__**

I use Think Pair Share with my students. Since I currently have very small class sizes this works best because you only need one other person to share. I also use cooperative learning when some students need a little support to complete a task or require direction when doing open-ended exploring of a task.


 * __3. I can think of a time when I used cooperative learning and I was pleased with the results. Why did it work well?__**

I had students work in groups of 4 to determine a technology they couldn’t live without. They had to agree and work through their decisions and reasoning behind their choice. I gave them guided questions to answer and then report to the class when they were finished. One of the reasons I think the assignment worked well is because the groups were small and each had to contribute to the discussion. They had to determine who would write the answers on the paper and who would present to the class. The guided questions kept them on task.


 * __4. I can think of a time when I used cooperative learning and I was not pleased with the results. Why did it not work well?__**

When the assignment is vague, difficult to complete, uninteresting, or students are unprepared to share about a topic, students wander off task and start socializing instead of working the assignment. Teachers have to tolerate some socializing (after all we are encouraging them to share and discuss amongst themselves) but if groups are not set up with at least one student leader who wants to get the task done the lesson can be lost as student fritter away class time chatting about other things. I have found that students need direction and some experiences with the topic of the lesson. Without it they have little input to give in the activity.


 * __5. What questions do I have about using cooperative learning in my classroom?__**

I teach special education students with small class sizes. I find it difficult to engage students in cooperative learning activities. I have a group of low-functioning students and working in groups of two or three makes it nearly impossible to solicit useful output of information from them. I tend to just work as one group with them. I will look for some ideas to implement cooperative learning into my lessons.


 * Apply and Reflect:**

I enjoyed working with Google docs but was disappointed when I tried to upload our final project from MS Word. It was too large to do as a completed document. I have used Google docs many times with both students and classmates during my masters programs. My group meet 3 times to collaborate and complete our project posted below. We created a teachers guide to assess teachers with topics that they may struggle with when working with special needs students.

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