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.