Thank you Jeremy

Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for all the support, guidance, and encouragement you have provided us throughout the year. We will really miss you next year .

Survivors PLC Meeting - June 7, 2011

Survivors meeting – June 7, 2011

Topic: Cooperative Learning

For our last PLC meeting, our conversation revolved around articles on cooperative learning. We chose the ‘Text Rendering Experience’ protocol for this session. In this type of protocol, each member chooses a word, a phrase and a sentence from the text in order to create discussion around the topic. The discussion was very productive and allowed us all to share our classroom challenges and beliefs about cooperative learning. As a group, we mostly agreed that the concept of cooperative learning can be very rewarding if it is set up properly in the classroom.

The words chosen from the text were: interdependence, active, effective, norms, and strategy. Interdependence best exemplifies the nature of cooperative learning because it defines how students must be able to work in teams where each person is reliant on the other to get the task done. Cooperative learning is active because it makes students become part of the learning process and pushes them to be aware of what’s going on in the lesson. It is effective because it can be more beneficial to students than more traditional teaching strategies, but it also requires established norms so that students learn how to cooperate and understand the spirit of group work. In doing so, students can raise their self-esteem and learn valuable social skills for their future.

Some of the phrases we chose were:

“managing noise levels”

Because group work allows the students to engage a little more freely than in a teacher-centered lesson, managing the noise level in the class can be a challenge.

“carefully structured activities” and “start with short, highly-structured activities”

Cooperative learning is not something that will be productive if teachers are not careful with the way they plan to incorporate this strategy. Teachers must set up cooperative learning so that students understand that they each have a role, and that group work is not a “nest for lazy people.” In addition, it is important to spend time at the beginning to provide students with immediate feedback on how well they are contributing or how well the group is working together.

“the culture of the classroom.”

Essentially, if cooperative learning is used at elementary levels of education, students become more and more accustomed to the practice and acquire more positive behaviors in relation to teamwork. However, sometimes, if not all teachers are familiar with how to set up and use cooperative learning, it can be very difficult to change the educational culture of a class, let alone a school. One member commented that cooperative learning is made even more difficult in Turkey due to the nature of interaction and dialogue that students are traditionally accustomed to.

Some of the sentences we chose were:

“The ownership of teaching and learning is shared by groups of students, and is no longer the sole responsibility of the teacher.”

When teachers incorporate cooperative learning into their instruction time, students become educators too. In contributing to a team effort, they lighten the load of the teacher who is often seen as the leader of the class. With successful cooperative learning tasks, learning is no longer teacher-centered.

“Establish groups using a variety of criteria, such as social skills, academic skills, student interests, and instructional objectives.”

This is a very crucial part of cooperative learning. Getting to know your students well is the basis for all group work. It does take time, and you may have to make changes along the way, but teamwork won’t succeed if students don’t feel like they can work together or share a common ground.

“Students should understand the objectives, instructional tasks, and criteria for success.”

As with all strategies, it is important to share what you are trying to accomplish with your students. Setting up very clear objectives and tasks not only helps the students understand their roles in the learning process, but also reflect on the purpose of the assignments or tasks. Finally, making sure students know how they are being assessed and how they can reach a better grade allows them to try to make improvements and seek to improve their skills.