MAKING COOPERATIVE LEARNING WORK FOR YOU

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MAKING COOPERATIVE LEARNING WORK FOR YOU

• There are many resources available to help you
  learn more about strategies for cooperative
  learning choose one to keep it simple!

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PIES

• Positive Interdependence
• Individual Accountability
• Equal Participation
• Simultaneous Interaction

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When Cooperative Learning Goes Wrong

• Dont mark a group product.
• Maintain a focus on the group product as the
  learning part of the lesson.
• Provide an individual form of assessment on the
  same type of task or expectation following the
  group time working together.
• Use heterogeneous groupings or, for some tasks,
  random groupings.

4
Good Ways to Keep Cooperative Learning Working
for You

• Provide role cards so that everyone has a clearly
  defined task.
• Keep track of who is in which roles, so the more
  desirable roles ( and the less desirable ones)
  get rotated among students.
• Attach some part of the puzzle of the days
  learning to some token piece of equipment if
  possible (e.g., the calculator, the dice, the
  deck of cards, etc.)

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Creating Positive Interdependence

• This is probably the most important and the most
  difficult part of cooperative learning to plan.
• Why? Because you need to plan it so that capable
  students dont feel held back and less capable
  ones dont feel bulldozed.
• Do this by providing some form of non-mark
  recognition to every team that completes the task
  so that all team members know the skill or
  content.

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Individual Accountability

• Plan a group task but individual assessment of
  the knowledge or skill that is your focus.
• Never give a group mark!
• Be sure that students know what the individual
  assessment will be before they start the group
  taskit will help to motivate their involvement.

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Equal Participation

• The way you plan for positive interdependence can
  support equal participation.
• Be sure that you have arranged the physical space
  so that students can work together comfortably.
• Reward the type of interaction you want to see (
  e.g., heads together, bottoms in the air) by
  praising it and showing other teams what it looks
  like and sounds like.
• Focus on teaching and/or reinforcing one social
  skill per cooperative activity use T-charts to
  anchor the skill praise its use!

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T-Chart Anchors Skill Disagreeing in an
agreeable way

• LOOKS LIKE

• SOUNDS LIKE

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SIMULTANEOUS INTERACTION

• Provide enough time for productive discussion to
  take place remember that discussion is part of
  working together.
• Praise on-task discussions debrief with examples
  of what you heard and saw that was positive.
• Structure time for each group to identify what
  they did well and where they should focus goals
  for improvement.

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SOME SOCIAL SKILLS YOU WILL NEED TO TEACH

• Active listening
• Taking turns
• Sharing materials
• Respecting the ideas and rights of others
• Not making or receiving put-downs
• Never laughing at others mistakes

• Making decisions
• Solving problems
• Praising others
• Disagreeing in an agreeable way
• Resolving conflict
• Reaching consensus
• Creating the Dynamic
• Classroom, p.34

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Kagan Smart Card

• Kagan identifies 56 strategies and briefly
  explains each you will develop new strategies as
  you work with this approach
• Some are team building ideas some can be applied
  to content.
• Keep the strategies simple, and focused on
  everyone learning the content or skill.

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• THINK BIG. But start small!