As I've said before, I'm very fortunate to be working with English teachers who give me the chance to practice a lot of different methods in their classrooms.
A new idea that I'm trying out in one of my classrooms is cooperative learning. Cooperative learning involves putting students into small groups and allowing them to share their strengths and abilities in working toward a common goal--in this case, learning a language. The group functions as a whole--meaning everyone has something to contribute to the good of the group and everyone works together to make sure everyone understands.
Cooperative learning has 5 main elements:
Positive Interdependence--this means that the group works as a whole. The group succeeds or fails together.
Individual Accountability--in spite of working in a group, each student has his/her own work to do. Students aren't just copying one another. In this case, students have individual tasks that they are completing in order to work toward one goal.
Face-to-Face Interaction--students get to talk things out and learn from each other.
Interpersonal and Small Group Social Skills--students learn important skills for how to work in a group--including leadership, decision-making, trust, communication, conflict resolution, etc...
Group Processing--students get the chance to reflect on how things are going and discuss how to improve in the future.
Little by little, I'm going to try to incorporate more cooperative learning activities.
However, to start, I have rearranged the classroom in order to foster more of a group mentality through face-to-face interaction. I have moved the desks to form groups of 4 or 5. Each desk within the group has a number on. This number corresponds to a responsibility.
- Pass out the folders
- Pass out the pencil cases
- Reporter
- Supervisor
- Wild Card
The key responsibilities here being the Reporter and the Supervisor. The Reporter is the representative of the group and is supposed to communicate with me about how everything is going in the group (if they have a problem, if everyone is finished with an exercise, etc.). The supervisor oversees how the group is working. He or she makes sure that everyone is doing his/her work and paying attention. The supervisor also makes sure that everyone is participating and contributing to the group conversation.
As the students get accustomed to the new arrangement, I'm going to try to incorporate other cooperative learning activities.
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