Standard: Teachers Facilitate Learning for Their Students Element: Teachers use a variety of instructional methods.
Teachers help students work in teams and develop leadership qualities.
COOPERATIVE LEARNING (CL)
1. Positive Interdependence Students must feel that they need each other in order to complete the group task, or lesson. Positive interdependence can be built into the task by:
Jig sawing information (Jigsaw 1/jigsaw 2)
Blue Box Activity with ISV cards,
Assigning duties and responsibilities within groups
It is of great necessity to prepare lessons and strive to design assignments that will allow students to experience a deep sense of interdependence.
2. Individual Accountability/ Personal Responsibility Students must feel that they are each accountable for helping to complete a task and for mastering material. They must know that a "chauffeur/hitchhiker" situation will not be productive. Ways to build in individual accountability include:
Students take individual quizzes;
Each student is responsible for a specific portion of a task;
Each student must be able to summarize lessons and concepts;
any student may be called on at random to answer for the team.
3. Interpersonal and Collaborative Skills These include skills for working together effectively (staying on task, paying attention to details, recording ideas and following rules) as well as group maintenance skills (encouraging each other). Ways to foster skill development include teacher modeling, brainstorming characteristics of "good" skills, direct practice, process observing, and reflection. Skill practice can be "tacked on" to academic lessons through games (e.g., Talking Chips) or by making social skills a separate objective to be practiced and observed. Group point systems work very well!