Cooperative Learning

Provide students with opportunities to interact with each other in groups in ways that enhance their learning.

Generalizations From Research

 * 1) Organizing groups based on ability levels should be done sparingly.
 * 2) Cooperative learning groups should be rather small in size.
 * 3) Cooperative learning should be used consistently and systematically, but should not be overused.

Example Activities

 * Project-Based Learning
 * Wikis
 * Collaborative Writing

Special Note: Cooperative Learning IS NOT only "collaborative groups." Collaborative Groups are one form of Cooperative Learning, and Cooperative Learning is anything that involves students interacting with one another in a learning process.

Recommendations & Ideas

 * 1) Use a variety of criteria to group students
 * 2) Use informal, formal, and base groups
 * 3) Keep groups to a manageable size
 * 4) Combine cooperative learning with other classroom structures

Information presented above in the definition is from McREL, and generalizations from research, and recommendations & ideas is from Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement (ASCD)(Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, Jane E. Pollock).

Web 2.0 Connections
"Y" Under each category indicates that this tool can be used with this strategy.

"Free +" Indicates that the tool is free at the basic level, but that more advanced versions are available at a cost.

Category Key:

SD = Identifying Similarities and Differences CL = Cooperative Learning SNT = Summarizing and Note-Taking ER = Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition HP = Homework and Practice NR = Nonlinguistic Representation OF = Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback HYP = Generating and Testing Hypotheses QCO = Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers



Examples from teachers, students, classrooms, schools
Please click on the "edit" tab to share your examples here.

Contributor: Stephanie Sandifer

Students in our World Geography and World History classes used Google Docs to do collaborative writing projects for the annual History Fair. Students were able to monitor each other's contributions to the group writing and the papers were shared with the teacher through Google Docs so that she was able to monitor participation as well by viewing the "revisions" of each writing project. The students and the teacher were very impressed and pleased with how Google Docs enabled them to collaborate more effectively and efficiently.

Contributor:' John Peters

Students in my Health Science Technology classes used VoiceThread to support our CT&E Secretary who was nominated for Paraprofessional of the Year at our high school. This was the first project that my students collaborated on and created a nice project. The students took the pictures of all of the teachers who are making comments, then set up the VoiceThread accounts for each teacher, then the took a laptop with a web cam and had the teachers make a comment about our CT&E Secretary.

The result was that not only was our CT&E Secretary awarded the Paraprofessional of the year for our high school, but was also selected as the Paraprofessional of the year for our entire school district!

johnpeters@herefordisd.net

Twitter: johnpeters

Contributor: Susanne Nobles

Students in my AP English Literature class tackled Things Fall Apart in seminar groups. They read and prepped for each discussion before class using these guidelines. They then ran their discussions in class with one person taking notes on the Google Doc and the others focused on their own ideas and the text. The result was engaged in-class cooperative learning and also engaged out-of-class cooperative learning as they reflected on their group ideas using the Google Doc.

snobles@fredericksburgacademy.org

Twitter snobles

Contributor: Jennifer Clark Evans

Students in my American Literature class studied "Black Ice" by Lorene Cary in literature circles by using a wiki to post their individual and group work. Students created individual pages and a page to record group notes, as well as used the discussion boards to post their own questions and answers to teacher prompts.

jclarkevans@fredericksburgacademy.org

Twitter jclarkevans

Contributor: Robert Walling

Students in my fourth grade class and responsible for working together in small groups to plan, write, edit, and record a section of our class podcast. We select a theme for our podcast, perhaps a science or social studies unit we are working on. Each group works together to perfect their section of the podcast to effectively present their understanding of the subject manner.

rwalling@amphi.com

Twitter rowall

Contributor: Angela Stevens

With the leadership of the Instructional Technology Specialist (me) and the "Technology" Vice Principal, or teachers planned the whole-campus staff development via Wikispaces. We began by planning the areas our school needed to focus on; we also planned by strands (or themes) we felt some teachers might like to concentrate on. After attending sessions teachers were asked to reflect on the session they attended (what they learned, liked or disliked, and what they need further help with). Our intent was to model what we would like to see teachers doing in their classrooms - collaborating and differentiating instruction. The professional development seemed to be popular so we will be planning something similar for this year.

Twitter astevens74