About cooperative learning.

Well, as I have been ill the past two weeks I haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy seeing the other teams presentations in class, but I have seen their blogs and seen the power points to see what caught their attention about cooperative learning, and what they that was more important to guide others. Let´s begin:

The Rolkids

Their guide had many content, we can see they paid more attention to the techniques, as they explained them very well so we understand them properly. They also have added some advantages and disadvantages about cooperative learning, as we learnt in didactics, I think this is very important, because we have to know the drawbacks to try to change them or decrease its effects, so this helps us to be aware of other activities and methodologies we can also include in the class. 

We can see how in peer tutoring, one student becomes “teacher” and the other one learns from what he knows, always with supervision of the real teacher, but it is important that none of them gives the solution, as they have to be a guide for the student to find out the solution by himself.

The Differents,

This group has also incorporated the webquest to the techniques, it is a great way of working all together, as nobody is left behind, because everyone has something to contribute with to get all together to the final solution. They have explained very well the way the students and the different teams must distribute the different rolls to work better as a group, and highlight the importance of changing the rolls each time. They also have explained the way students and groups should evaluate themselves and other teams, to know what to improve and what they have done well for future tasks, it makes them observe and reflect bout others and their own activities and the way they have carried them out.

La Banda del Patio

This group has explained to us in what the based teams consist in, they are those who shouldn’t change unless we do any other activities with sporadic groups. To create them, it is necessary that they are heterogeneous, with between four and six people. To achieve this, it is important that teacher makes the groups, he/she can use many methods to do it. One of them is a psychometric test, but it is rare, as we need many information; also the students can choose two other pupils with whom they would like to be, but this way we could find more differences and some kids could feel excluded. So the perfect method would be the “three columns” if the teacher chooses for each group, one student who works advanced and who can stretch the group (first column), two who are more needed to carry out their work (third column), and one of the remaining’s of the class (second column).

As the classroom will be the space where we will be working every day for at least a whole school year, it is important that the pupils feel comfortable, and to achieve this it is important to set some rules for a better coexistence in the class. But we also want to motivate them and let them know that school is a great and fun place where they will learn many things for their life, so as my group exposed, it could be interesting to have a class philosophy to catch the attention of the student with slogans, for instance: “Believe and achieve” or “Be yourself”.

They also explained the jigsaw technique: the base teams are split up heterogeneously with other members of other teams, they specialize in a subtopic, exchanging ideas with the other members of the new group, and then they return to the base groups to explain what they have learnt. This way all of them are bound to cooperate, and they all feel they are needed, as each one is a piece of the jigsaw.

Escuela de bocación

The teacher planning is very important to carry out cooperative learning, the teacher must have a clear and organized idea of what are her goals and how is she going to achieve them for her students, without messing them up and being able to show them to work with this method if they learn not only content, but also they develop the basic competences. In every moment the teacher must be a guide for them, she/he is not the center of attention, just a scaffolding.

Autonomy: Is one of the main skills which students must develop. In cooperative learning the way we show them responsibility is by giving each kid a different roll inside their teams, being rotated each time. To reflect their work, they have to elaborate tables with objectives, functions and achievements of the team.

Another technique is group investigation, which basically consists in the student choosing their group and what subject they want to develop, so the teacher then gives them the steps to follow and find information. From here, each group must elaborate an exposition and answer questions from others, finally there is a joint evaluation between students and the teacher. This is a great way of doing expositions, as the proper kids get more involved as they are able to choose which topic the prefer, and with how they want to carry out the work.

Futupasta

Futupasta clarified the TAI and TGT techniques:

TAI (Team Assisted individualization): Its and individualized program in which all the student have the same content, but each one in a different way, as the teachers adapts it to the diversity of the class (different needs and multiple intelligences´), then in the base groups the members help each other to achieve their different goals which accord to the different levels and rhythms

TGT (Teams Games Tournament): This time the base group has to split up to win points. Homogeneous groups of three are formed, they compete to win points by responding correctly different questions. This is a a great way of making everyone feel involved, as those you have more needs in their base team, have the opportunity to win the most points for them, as he is competing with other students who have similar cognitive development as him.

So as we can see, cooperative learning is a great way of working in class, and it shouldn’t be a sporadic method of working, we have to work on it as a content more by using techniques like the ones we have explained, so with a bit of commitment and organization, you could carry out a great classroom and achieving all your goals.