4 Strategies for Cooperative Learning in Your Elementary Classroom
Elementary students are among the most eager, excited pupils you'll ever encounter! They're full of ideas, motivation, and creativity. And, even more importantly, they're at a stage where they're open to make new friends, tell stories, and share their minds with the world.
As a teacher What can you do to leverage this within your classroom?
Introducing: cooperative learning techniques! The integrated method of learning with peers and students is a fantastic method to harness their enthusiasm and sharing of stories, helping other students in the class develop while also creating an atmosphere of cooperation and community within your classroom.
What is an Cooperative Learning Strategy?
There are three main ways of teaching that allow students collaborate with fellow students. According to Johnson et. as (1986) the cooperative learning strategies have been proven to be highly effective and beneficial for both students as well as teachers.
The approach of a cooperative learning approach is by putting students in small groups and helping them work in teams in order to solve a problem.
What are the benefits of Cooperative Learning Strategies Helpful?
Learning strategies that involve cooperative work are useful at all stages of life and especially in the time when many of our youngest learners start school. For elementary students cooperating at an early age can be advantageous for building teamwork, communication, and the ability to socialize.
Johnson et. and (1986) also described the cooperative learning techniques that have beneficial effects on friendships between students where students who engaged in these activities had more friends and better quality friendships with their friends. Creighton & Szymkowiak (2014) have also observed improved social competence among students who participated in cooperative games. This included a better capacity to negotiate, as well as a greater ability to manage personal needs and building positive relationships with other people.
4 Cooperative Learning Strategies to Test
Jigsaw Pieces
This method is where every group member gets assigned one part of the project to work with each other. For example, younger students might be given a piece of a puzzle which they have to work on building together. A different approach for elementary students is to give three lists which are related to one another and ask students to find similar elements from the three lists together. This activity improves listening comprehension and solving skills among the students.
Interviewing classmates
Students can interview their classmates and have guided conversations with the other students, which is perfect for kids who may be having difficulty making friends. This also promotes active listening as well as builds interpersonal skills like empathy and emotional intelligence.
This activity works by pairing students and inviting students to talk with each other on a given topic. It is possible to ask students speak to each other about the topic of your lesson plan (ie. What do you know about lakes and bodies made of the water?). Alternatively, you may get the students to talk about their experiences during winter/summer break for example, as a way of building friendships in younger classes.
The Marshmallow and Spaghetti Tower
This is the classic challenge of providing groups of students with a marshmallow with 20 sticks of spaghetti and a meters of tape. Students are then asked to construct the tallest tower they can with their marshmallow in the middle.
Tom Wujec dove deeper into this challenge and noticed an interesting finding - that kindergarteners performed significantly better on this test than MBA students. The reason is that younger students are much more likely to create prototypes as well as test and communicate than adults. Adults are conditioned about "how things are supposed to be done" so they are less likely to experiment and discover what is actually working best.
It's a good opportunity to encourage communication skills, test them with experiments, and see if any natural leaders emerge in the group.
Circle the Sage
"Circle the Sage," or "Circle The Sage" exercise is excellent to develop confidence, communication abilities, and accountability for individuals for elementary students. The activity begins with the entire class asking who knows what the correct answer is to a question (ie. the most difficult homework issue or something related to your present lesson). Ideally, 4-5 students can speak up and prepare to reply. They will be the "sages." Each Sage will take an area of the room and the rest of their classmates are sorted into each corner, where they stand around a sage who gives the solution to the question. Students are able to share their thoughts in a smaller group prior to returning to their chairs and discuss their learning with the larger class.
7 Strategies for Integrating Collaboration Learning Strategies
Mix Skill Levels
A major benefit that cooperative learning methods offer is that students can engage in learning and sharing. In order to get the most benefit of this, try creating your groups to reflect different levels of reading. Those with higher level reading abilities can help those that may have lower reading levels. The same can be done in assessing the ability to listen or problem-solving skills.
Keep Group Size Low
For students to improve the active skills of communication and quick problem-solving abilities, limit the group size to 3-5 students. Doing so enables students to be part of a group dynamic with a few students can lead naturally while others will be managers of a project component. With too many students in a group, some might feel left out or not get a significant share of the task. Having a significant component to focus on boosting motivation and an overall sense of importance to the group.
Training Short Time Frames
Keeping activity time within 15 minutes or less is useful when children first begin working on group projects with their peers. There is a chance that they will encounter difficulties communicating faster, or be distracted from activities faster at younger ages. When students advance through the year and in future classes, you may be able to increase how much time you assign to each co-learning strategy. When you are working on more difficult projects, it is also possible to break it up into smaller segments so that teams can be able to work on particular project components each day. This is also helpful for the process of breaking down big projects into more manageable, smaller practical tasks.
Give key Question questions and Objectives
To create alignment between teamwork and individual goals, be sure that the team are provided with distinct, precise objectives or questions to be working towards or meeting throughout the process. For smaller classes it is possible to focus on one objective (ie. put the puzzle pieces together for the creation of the dinosaur's face). For older classes, you can begin to integrate more stages of deliverables for your project (ie. First determine .... Use that data to design ....) You can also provide the final-project questions to classes that are older in order to let them know what they are expected to understand by the end this project (ie. What kind of material were you using during the project? Which materials were the most beneficial in the construction of an erect tower? )
Avoid Interrupting Group Work in Active Mode
The benefit of cooperative learning strategies is that teams can work together to solve their issues. Encouraging students to speak to others to discuss ideas, negotiate, and decide is a key component of developing communication skills. Inadvertently interrupting conversations with groups will disrupt the focus of groups and cause groups to become dependent on support from the teacher/supervisor. A better approach to interrupting groups to discuss project progress is to have an assistant supervisor on floats who will be a walking guide to spot strengths and weaknesses of leaders in communication, styles of communication, as well as the pace of progress in groups. If your group faces a problem or question during the course of work, let them know to first attempt problem-solving by themselves before going to the front desk and seek assistance.
Ensure Individual Accountability
While the students are working together in cooperative learning activities, they are still very focused on working in a group in their own way. Be mindful of how students are engaging with other students, developing leadership skills, or even passing up on projects to allow others to be in charge. Insuring accountability for each student means students will be evaluated on their own contributions as well as communication approach within the group. This will ensure that they will have improved skills to take away from the experience.
Review of Practice Groups
The process of reflecting as a group following the lesson will help students to discuss what worked well, what didn't work effectively, and the reasons for these issues may have occurred. In a group, you can also discuss what can be done better the next time, to make sure you have an improved process.
You can choose to do this in their current groups in order to strengthen the collaborative effort. You can then change this process to encompass the entire classroom, to let students observe how different groups have worked together. For smaller classes, it might be better to share your reflection with the full class, while older students can start reflecting on themselves in smaller groups. The best way to conduct this after the project while it is still fresh in their minds.
Conclusion
The integration of cooperative learning strategies do not require expensive resources, charismatic leadership, or complicated programming (Slavin, 1999). It's therefore the ideal way to begin by incorporating it into your daily techniques to assist youngsters build stronger relations, acquire strong social competency skills, as well as develop a greater perception of oneself.
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