Cooperative Learning

What is it?

Cooperative learning is when students work in small groups to achieve a common goal (Ormrod, p. 442). Students might be paired or placed in groups for small tasks and class activities or might be grouped together for larger, on-going group projects. All are considered cooperative learning because students are cooperating with one another to produce results, whether it’s simply talking to and learning from one another or turning in a final group assignment.

The social cognitive theory claims that students can learn by observing and interacting with others (Ormrod, p. 329). Modeling is an important aspect of the social cognitive theory and they can not only learn the material from the teacher, but also from each other. Those who believe collaborative learning is a valuable strategy believe that teacher-led instruction isn’t always enough and that students sometimes learn better hearing it from another student. The risk here is the passing on of incorrect information, but with teacher-monitoring and guidance, this can be easily avoided.

How will I use it in my classroom?

As you’ve learned in my previous strategy, alternative seating, students will be grouped together so that cooperative learning can be facilitated with ease. One specific activity I will use is when introducing a unit on poetry, students will work together to find their newly learned vocabulary in a poem. They will each have their own sheets with the vocabulary terms (alliteration, assonance, figurative language, imagery, etc…) and boxes to fill in with examples of each from the poem. Students will work together to find all the elements of poetry in the poem and write the examples down on their papers. Students are collaborating and learning together, are opening up a dialogue about the terms they’ve just learned, and are ideally developing a greater comprehension of the material (Ormrod, p. 443). This is just one example of the many cooperative learning strategies I plan on using in my classroom!

Sources:

Ormrod, J. E., Anderman, E. M., & Anderman, L. (2017). Educational Psychology: Developing Learners. New York: Pearson.