COOPERATIVE LEARNING
By Lashelle Farmer
What is it?
· Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement.
Benefits:
· Students who engage in cooperative learning learn significantly more, remember it longer, and develop better critical-thinking skills than their counterparts in traditional lecture classes.
· Students enjoy cooperative learning more than traditional lecture classes, so they are more likely to attend classes and finish the course.
· Students are going to go on to jobs that require teamwork. Cooperative learning helps students develop the skills necessary to work on projects too difficult and complex for any one person to do in a reasonable amount of time.
· Cooperative learning processes prepare students to assess outcomes linked to accreditation.
http://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/staffdev/mcdonald_j/downloads/21st/comm/BenefitsOfCL/OverviewOfCoopLrng_Benefits.html
Collaborative learning that is well managed can be a very effective method:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEh8Z0sbiRE
Learning partners discuss a cooperative text in CSI - Cooperative Strategies Instruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G46ahbLsIw
Programs:
· Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC): A comprehensive approach to reading and writing/language arts for grades 2-6 that integrates the latest reading research findings with the essential components that make cooperative learning so successful.
Contact: Anna Marie Farnish, CIRC
Center for the Social Organization of Schools
3505 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
(410) 516-0370)
· Success for All: A schoolwide program for grades pre-K through 5 that strives to ensure that every child will be performing at grade level in reading, writing, and math by third grade and will be able to maintain grade level from then on.
Contact: Robert Slavin or Nancy Madden
Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students
3505 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
(410) 516-0274)
· Finding Out/Descubrimiento: A science and math curriculum for bilingual Spanish-English students in grades 2 through 5.
Contact: Michael Chatfield
Stanford University, School of Education
Stanford, CA 94305
(415) 723-5992