Cooperative Learning and Curriculum for Excellence

Some years ago I benefited greatly from a 3 day inservice delivered by Canadians Norm and Cath Green to the staff of Jordanhill School.

The 3 day inservice was all about cooperative learning, which was seen as another learning and teaching aid along with AiFL. It is now clear to me that Jordanhill were ahead of the game in that they knew such concepts (along with Critical Skills) were the foundations for Curriculum for Excellence.

Cooperative learning is not just collaborative learning or groupwork - this was a salient point from the outset.

There are 5 key elements to cooperative learning:

Face to Face Interaction - group memebers promote each other's success, social skills improved and needed

Positive Interdependence - the group's performance depends on everyone. Groups will sink or swim together!

Group Processing - group reflects on how they are and have worked as a team

Interpersonal Skills - social skills taught and developed such as: leadership, trust, decision-making, communication, managing conflict

Individual and Group Accountability - to avoid social loafers group sizes are kept small and everyone has a clearly defined role in the task (ie researcher, reader, designer, project leader etc)


Group Forming

When it comes to presenting their findings, using a little bit of randomness like drawing names ensures they all have to be aware they can be asked to perform!

When forming groups mixed ability is normally the best.

Cooperative Learning Tools that I use:
Appointments - pupils have an appointments card which they have to fill with other pupils names. In doing so they are creating a whole list of teams they can be asked to form. i.e. 10am partners work together one week, then 2pm the next. Helps breakout of friendship groups.

Jigsaw - pupils are divided into home groups where they are then sub-divided into expert groups. The expert groups go and meet up to learn part of a topic and then later return to their home groups to teach the rest of the home group the topic. eg Home group is told topic is HRM. The expert groups are: Recruitment, Training, and Legislation. So the Home group splits and sends members to each of the 3 subtopics. So member A learns about Training along with the other experts from other home groups, and then returns later to teach his/her own home group Training.

T-Chart - a piece of paper that is divided into a T. It is useful to organise information such as advantages and disadvantages etc.

Benefits of cooperative learning

 less academic pupils learn skills from the more academic pupils
 increases self-esteem among pupils
 develops social skills
 increases knowledge retention
 develops oral communication

Further Reading

Here is an excellent video on You Tube with some tips for cooperative learning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LWE2HF1v1Y

More You Tube information on Cooperative Learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxHJEmiDCKY&feature=related

Please share you ideas and opinions with me here on the blog.