Cooperative Learning Session

Cooperative Learning Session
I had debated for a long time about whether to pack some of the CL resources that I use for my Canadian and US presentations (e.g. Spencer Kagan's overheads for his structure) but, in the end, decided to leave them at home.
I spent Monday evening and breakfast Tuesday morning making up chart paper posters for the structures I planed to use (thanks for all the coloured makers Tracy). Good choice.

The school visits with Tracy and Jacque last week make it very clear to me that simple, hand made materials would be far more appropriate for teachers who had very few resources to work with themselves.
In addition, I totally tossed some of the plans I had made to shift to simple strategies and structures that could be done easily and successfully in large, crowded classrooms!

The teachers had already learned and practiced a couple of structures in an earlier session I facilitated on the Environment: "Numbered Heads", "Round Robin" and "Think-Pair-Share" as well as a small group activity with group sharing using a "Gallery Walk".

At the beginning of this session, I became aware of the background of the teachers (thanks for raising this Allan). Many had received some training in the basics of CL by regional coordinators (Ministry of Education) and a few had already begun implementing the basics. Allan, for example, had already rearranged his classroom so the students were sitting in groups, allowing them to face each other (as well as see the blackboard).

The CL session reinforced these structures with practice as we examined the "5 Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning" (David and Roger Johnson's work). "Numbered Heads" was debriefed for its excellence in reinforcing both Individual and Group Accountability. Role cards (modeled on those that Spencer Kagan has) were made of mounting card/paper and were used by participants for several of the activities for both this and other sessions. We talked about different grouping strategies

• teacher vs student choice
• academically heterogeneous or homogeneous
• based on different abilities/skills (with reference to the upcoming session on MI)
  

and when each would be appropriate.

We finished with a discussion on how CL can be used in large (50-90 students) classes. At this point, the teachers were generally aware of how hard we had tried to become familiar with what their teaching conditions were, so their comments focused more on which structures would/would not work with their class as well as how they could be modified rather than why they could not be used. There was a typical spread between those seeing potential for the use of CL and those who were uncomfortable with it...as there is with every teacher session I have ever facilitated.
Suggestions for the larger classes included:

• working with another teacher to split the class
• use volunteer helpers (students, parents)
• using groups of 2 (pairs) which will not require much movement, but allow for more student-student interaction and problem-solving

Overall, the group was realistically positive and willing to try some things.
Good luck everyone!
Meg