COOPERATIVE LEARNING GUIDE - ESCUELA DE BOCACION & FUTUPASTA.

Last Thursday, the last two groups presented their project to the whole class. Although we were tired of hearing two weeks the same, we learned new things.

Escuela de Bocación emphasize in the autonomy of the students. This skill is essential for children because obtaining it, they will have the ability to take responsabilities. Moreover, if every child is autonomus, they will progress in group work, so the results of the projects will be better.
Apart from that, they talked about an interesting concept, which is the scaffolding. This concept means the following, everyone in a new situation needs someone to guide them, so in this situation, the teacher should be the scaffold. Then, when the students dominate the topic, they do not need the teacher no more, so they take out that scaffold and keep on growing. By the scaffolding, they gain self-confidence, which increases autonomy.
Another important concept that they innovated was the "Multiple intelligences". It's very important that the teacher knows the type of intelligence of their students and just in that way organize the contents and the way of making the class work.

Futupasta innovated in talking about TAI and TGT, which are different techniques to apply cooperative learning in a classroom. First, TAI technique mixed cooperative learning and individual work. Every student has the same topic but depending on their level, they have different objectives. The class is divided in heterogeneous based teams. The main objective of this activity is improving as a group by helpingeach other, if the achieve this they will be rewarded. Finally, TGT (Teams Games Tournament) technique, the class is divided in heterogeneous groups based on the capacity of each student. The main objective is learning and understanding what the teacher explains and then don´t leave students behind. The activity will develope in this way: the teacher will distribute the class in groups with the same capacitites. Then, they will pick a card and answer the question on the card. Finally, each member's points will go to the base teams.

To sum up, the groups developed their presentations in an organized way, so t was easy to understand the main ideas. As I said before, we have seen lots of presentations with the same topic but each has a different point of view.

Last Thursday February 19, we saw two presentation more about the Cooperative Learning. One important thing in this method of work is that the teacher have to sensitize to the children and teach values.

The children need to know ,if they want to learn more knowledge, they need to be autodidactic. Autonomy is a value that the teacher have to transmit to the students firstly. Then the students could evaluate themselves, and learn without helps of the teachers or tutors.
In the other hand, we could not forget the relevance of the teachers. A teacher has to be concrete with the students. Also the teacher has to define each skill at all, and start the explanation step by step. In addition,the teacher has to often practice the skills and be a scaffolding for the children.

Now, I am going to explain two techniques of Cooperative Learning. First I am going to talk about the Team Games Tournament. The class is going to divide in groups which members have different level, and then each one going to study their topic. Later the game would start,and in group of three the students would answer the questions.

In the other hand, I am going to write about other techniques, Team Assisted Individualization. In this method, the teacher would combine cooperative learning and individualized learning. And all the students has the same topic but adapted to their knowledge and rhythm.

Presentations on Thursday (19.02.2015)

      On thursday, the last two groups presented. Because they were the last groups, we expected them to be better and make a good summary of the subject.As we expected, they didn't let us down and they met our expectations. Although it was the last day, we keep learning new information.

      In the presentation of the group " Escuela de Bocacion", we learned three new things. One of them is the autonomy of the students.Autonomy has a crucial importance and is neccessary for effective learning.Autonomy occurs when each student knows their responsibilities and has the ability to take care of their own learning, which is needed for their working together on their own group project. The more the students become autonomous, the more they gain self-confidence. Especially, writing blogs can be a good example for increasing autonomy.

      The other point is that how important the teacher planning is. Because the teacher is the one who gives the task, explains the rules, helps the students about their planning. In order to do that, she has to know the knowledge very well, explain very clearly what the project and the task of each student is.The group talked about something else in order to achive this, teacher being "scaffolding" for the class. This means the teacher should support the students during the learning process until they learned how learn in an aotonomous way.

      What was very different from the other groups is that they talked about "Multiple Intelligences". It is very important that the teacher considers each and every intelligence the students have. Because they are in a heterogeneous group, they have different skills, intelligences and diffetent ways of understanding like linguistic, mathematical, verbal, interpersonal and so on...

      Group investigation is the technique we used in our cooperative learning presentations and it is very similar to jigsaw but more complicated.First of all, the students choose subtopics according to their interests and aptitudes. And then, they choose their objectives and make a plan with the guidance of the teacher.In groups of 3-5 heterogeneous students, they present and answer the questions of the other classmates or the teacher. After the presentation, group must be evaluated by the other groups, the teacher and also they should co-evaluate themselves.

      The Futu Pasta Team talked about TAI and Teams-Games-Tournament. TAI is a technique which mixes cooperative learning with the individual work.Each student works on the same topic in a personalized way.Base teams choose their objectives and plans. They help each other and if they improve as a team and accomplish the objectives, they get a reward.

      In TGT, the class is divided into heterogeneous base groups based on their capacities. When they know the knowledge, the tournament starts. Students form homogeneous groups with whom has the same capacity as theirs. Students try to answer the questions on the cards, the one who knows, gets a point. The main objective of this technique is the students' possibility of bringing more points to their groups no matter what their capacities are.But it is not a cooperative method, instead it is a competetive method. And the main purpose is not to answer as quickly as possible but to be aware of what you know. And also because it is not a personal competition,the students can't get only one prize. All the groups have to get a prize but not based on the number of the points. Prizes should be given according to the students behaviours.

Cooperative Learning II (17/02/2015)

I am going to write in this post about the class of the tuesday. First of all I am going to talk about the resource of the WebQuest. This method is based in internet, the teacher would create a WebQuest about the topic of the class,the children will could see in their houses ,and make it with their partner in the informatica classes. Also I think that is a motivation method for the kids, because in the index of the WebQuest, the teacher could write a interesting history to the material. As well as all the children need to work together and individually, and they can know their notes in the table of evaluation.

In the cooperative learning you can make a lot of forms of groups, and of these is Base Team. In this distribution, the teacher make the groups with a sociometric test to obtain information from each student and then forms the groups. Also the teacher can make groups would create three columns, and in the first the students most application, in the middle the normal students, and in the last one the less application. And then mix , one of the first, two of the second and one of the last.

The philosophy of the class would be the same of cooperative learning, transmit to the children the importance of the slogans and working in groups. One important thing is the rules for working in groups, that all the teacher need to explain to the children. You have to be responsible, you have to be respectful and you have to be safe.  

The Presentations on Tuesday (17.02.2015)

      Three groups including ours, which are "Differents" , "La Bando del Patio" and "Rigatoni's Angels" respectively, presented on tuesday.Although the topic is the same, because each group has a different point of view, there occurs new ideas and new information all the time.There were some points which were new to us or more emphasized.

      As two of the groups explained the Jigsaw technique and showed videos about it, I think this technique is understood better and will remain in people's mind. The main purpose of this technique is that the students need each other. Here how it happens : In a heterogeneous group of 4 or 5 people, every student has a small piece of the same topic. For some time, each student searches information about their own pieces. And then, people with the same piece of the topic come together and become a group of experts. When they know all the details about their own piece, they go back to their original groups and tell them what they have learned. So, all the members of the group need each other to complete the knowledege of the topic.

      A webquest is an inquiry based online tool where students are given a task and almost all of the information that the students use comes from the Web. And it gives importance to analysis, creativity and critisism rather than just acquiring the information. In the webquests that promote learning have 6 common attributes. "Introduction, Task, Project , Resources, Evaluaton, Conclusion." I think it is a new and modern way of learning in a cooperative way. Because techonolgy is a part of our lives, we should also use it in our teaching methods.

      What our group mentioned about forming base groups is to make a sociometric test which is needed to gain information from the students and to let the students know each other better ; and forming three columns. The ones who know about the subject, the ones who need help and the rest of the class. I learned that each group must contain one student with a high level, two students with a medium level and one with a low level. And also we didn't know that letting the students choose their groups was a way of forming sporadic groups. Because if done so, the group has the possiblity to become more homogeneous than heterogeneous, which is against the rules of base-team.

      What was different about the group La Banda Del Patio was that the groups need a written equipment plan so that it is not forgotten and in order to be shown later.

      There were two things which attracted my attention about the group "Differents". One of them is "different academic levels" written in the part of the difficulties, but the teacher said that being able to work with students with different academic levels is the main purpose of cooperative learning so it can by no means be a difficulty. And the other one is peer tutoring takes one session, it isn't at the end of the lesson.The subject to be studied by the students is certain and the teacher knows what they are studying.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING GUIDE - THE DIFFERENTS, LA BANDA DEL PATIO & RIGATONI'S ANGELS.

Two lessons ago, last Tuesday 17, the groups; The Differents, La banda del patio and Rigatoni's Angels, presented their project about cooperative learning.

In general, the presentations were well-organized and complete. Above all, I have to emphasize in some important concepts that weren't explained before. Those concepts are the philosophy of the class, classroom rules, based teams distribution and the webques.
Philosophy in a class is very important because the teacher has to teach some values for being good mates, moreover it makes them realize the importance of cooperative learning, or tu put it simple, work in groups. Also, the teacher has tu use and emphasize in some slogans like "Here is space for everyone". 
Another essential point showed was the importance of the rules for working in groups. Some of them are "Share everything", "Be respectful" or "Respect other's opinions". 
What wasn't named before about based teams was the distribution. One way is that the teacher by a sociometric test choose the students and distributes the groups. Another way for doing that is by letting them choose because this gives a lot of information to the teacher. Finally, the third way is by making three columns, in the first one are the capable ones, in the other side the "needly" ones and in the middle the rest of the class. The groups are made picking one student from each column. 
To finish, I'll talk about the webquest, which is a new toolfor using cooperative learning  where students are given a task and provided with access to online resources to help them complete the project.

17-02-2015 presentations about cooperative learning

This Tuesday we saw two presentations and we also show our presentation, in these presentations the main ideas were the philosophy in the classroom, the creation of the teams, the rules in the classroom, the jigsaw and the web quest.

In the philosophy idea the most important thing you have to take to account is the inclusion of every student in the classroom and that everyone feels that he belongs there and also cheer them up and motivate them. For creating the teams one thing to take as an important one is the heterogeneous of the teams, specially on base groups, in sporadic groups is not that important because they don’t last much but in base groups is very important and the methods you have to use to create this such as a sociometric test to see how is every student or making columns based on their capacities, one with the most capacities, another one with the needy ones and the last one with the normal kids, in order to make the groups you have to take one kid from the column one, another one from column two and two from column three, and you have your base group. Other thing that we talk about on Tuesday was the rules in the classroom, to sum up them are basically: be safe, be respectful and be responsible.

Then were the jigsaw and the web quest, the main ideas of the jigsaw are that every student is important inside their group because everyone of them has a small part of the topic, then they go to groups where students has the same part as theirs and become a group of experts about that part and then they explain it to their base groups so everyone gets the information. The web quest can be used as a good resource for creating cooperative learning, and in which you give more independency to the children while you use new technologies, in the web quest you put the instructions to follow to accomplish the project and also research pages and of course the evaluation in this y every student knows how it’s going to be evaluated and what does he have to do.

There were good presentations and the ideas were very interesting.

our presentation

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9jgt3g4z0jbyip/Cooperative%20Learning%20Guide%20%281%29%20%281%29.pptx?dl=0

Cooperative Learning Presentation ~ Los Rol Kids

            In the previous week, the presentations about Cooperative Learning started. The first group was Los Rol Kids.

            

            They first talked about the responsibilities of each group member and team objectives. But they forgot to write their personal commitments .They explained what cooperative learning is and the distribution of the students very clearly. When it came to the organization of the classroom, they put a picture in which the tables were in parallel. The right way of organizing the classrom is exact opposite of parallel. They should be in diagonal which is called a herringbone. And also they talked about the advantages and disadvantages of cooperative learning.But what we had known as disadvantages were in fact difficulties to carry out. It was very interesting. Then they explained the techniques which are used in cooperative learning. Their expressions in the slide were to the point and the way that they put pictures were well-organized and the colours were very eye-catching.What caught my attention most is that they created a webquest instead of showing one from a website. I learned a new website to create webquest called “Webquest Creator 2” and at the end, they showed us a video about cooperative learning.

             In sum, the presentation was quite good, they all knew the information very well and I think they did a great job by being authentic.

COOPERATIVE LEARNING GUIDE - LOS ROLKIDS

Last lesson, on Thrusday 12, the group "Los Rolkids" presented to the classroom their project about the methods of cooperative learning. 

First, they show us the responsabilities of each member of the group and group's objectives. Then, they made a brief summary of the main ideas of what cooperative learning is. Straightaway, they explained the methodology for making the groups. At this point they made a mistake because the pictures from the guide were wrong and they didn't changed them but they explained the group's distribution in a correct way.
Later on, they sorted out the advantages and disadvantages of cooperative learning. Although they made a good explanation about the advantages, the disadvantages weren't successful. They mixed up disadvantages with difficulties. Moreover, I must confess that I would have confused them too because I didn't noticed the difference until the teacher explained it to us.
Finally, in spite of having prepared six techniques, they could just explained two; the peer tutoring and the group investigation due to time. The main idea of peer tutoring is that one student turns into the teacher and help their classmates. Group investigation's method is an activity in which a group specialise at one topic and then explain it to the whole class. Also, they mentioned the WebQuest and explained it with a possible activity.

To sum up, I strongly believe that they made a great presentation, also they were well organized and explained the ideas in a clear and concise way. To finish, I'll say that video they chose was successful and amusing. 
GOOD JOB!☺

From my point of view, summarize of the presentation of my partners roll-kids, talk about the different ways to see the cooperative learning. The cooperative learning is a way to teach children. The first step for it, you need to think like children. Also all the teacher should know that all the people are different.
However I have learned new things, one of these is that in the cooperative learning did not have disadvantage, have difficulties. And other thing is that the children need to move because it is good for the brain.

group presentation COOPERATIVE LEARNING (Rol Kids)

Last Thursday we saw a presentation about cooperative learning from the Rol Kids group. 

In the presentation they explained the cooperative learning method, first they explained how they have been organization for the presentation and then they started explaining the main ideas from cooperative learning, where the most important thing is that you learn from people that are different than you. They explained the classroom organization in different kind of teams and how everything is situated. Then they said the advantages and disadvantages about the cooperative learning but in the disadvantages they made a little mistake because they put things that they weren’t disadvantages, but they could look like ones, they were only difficulties not disadvantages, so I learn that what I thought were disadvantages were difficulties, it was interesting.

Then they explained two techniques, the peer tutoring and the group investigation. The peer tutoring is a technique where one student is the tutor and the other one is the student, the most important things about peer tutoring is that the students change the roles so everyone gets their time to explain themselves and teach to another student, and in the group investigation is very important that everyone do their part on time to help the whole team.

They explained a webquest as a resource and I thought it was very interesting, and then they put a video about the cooperative learning.

From this presentation I learn the differences between disadvantage and difficulty and that in cooperative learning the important thing is that the students feel that they all can learn from each other, I think the group did a great work and the presentation was very interesting.