TeachingEnglish
Co-operative Learning
Submitted by Yusuf AL-Adarbeh on 17 December, 2009 - 19:18
How can we enhance cooperative learning?
I only use STAD in Grammar and Jigsaw in Reading. I would like to know more ways.
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I would like to know, too.
...and waiting for ideas from our experts on this.
Thank you!
Traika
Cooperative learning has been proven effective in all kinds of students, and a way to enhance it is to first make your group a cohesive group, that way they can all work together and learn better. Promoting group cohesiveness is key to cooperative learning. Cooperative learning can easily be enhanceed with fun activities according to age and level of the students, the important thing is to adapt your class to their needs and what they like so that they don't feel you are imposing anything.
Having students help each other during group or pair activities can help them not only get to know each other but also build confidence, because they have common goals but different backgrounds, knowledge and skills, and so in doing pair or group work they can find out that they are able to help the other person with a certain word or grammar conjugation.
In building their confidence and helping them become more comfortable around each other, students are most likely to be more participative and motivated to learn in the language classroom. This can be done with pair work asking each other questions, doing role plays about different situations, or even having them read each others written assignments and help check for mistakes or clarification.
Maybe with group investigations, this can help them to develop their analysis and evaluation.
A group project would be ideal.
The cooperative learning is a very useful method for make it easier to learn and to teach at the same time.
Is better for the students if they get more opinions, ideas and points of view of different classmates because they acquire more knowledge and understand better.
When the students work in groups to get the main idea of the lesson, they get what they want because if one of them dont understand, another student shpuld explain him and the line continue like that, so at the end everybody get the knowledge they need.
For a group to be cooperative they need to be cohesive and work together as a team to achieve a common goal and make the learning or undeerstanding successful. There are many methods you can use such as warmers or ice breakers so students get to know each other and get confident and comfortable around each ohter to be free to express their ideas or opinions without the fear of making mistakes. You could do interviews, role plays, brainstorming, discuss a subject in groups and a lot of activities more. It depends on the creativity and enthusiasm of the teacher.
Cooperative learning is when students work together as a group and this is very helpful because by working together students can work better and learn things from each other.
Teachers use the cooperative learning a lot in students because they get to know each other, they interact and learn better and faster.
Something that we can do to enhance cooperative learning is try to promote cohesiveness in the students. Let them work together, share information, compare answers, and increase proximity so they start to feel comfortable with their classmates and can find the better way to work with those students who they have similar objectives in the class or skills to help each other.
The cooperative learning is very useful in a classroom, when the students are able to learn from others the relationship between them increases and the group become more cohesive.
Also the coperative learning is an instrument for any teacher specially in big groups to promote a good environment and a more effective learning process.
Something we can do to enhance the cooperative learning in our class is promoting cohesiveness in all our students; facilitating proximity in almost all the activities we have in the class; helping them feel comfortable each other with ice-breakers, so they can have the chance to know who is best to work with, and who they need to work harder to complete a task.