Cooperative+Learning

**Cooperative Learning**

**Read and Reflect**
 * One purpose of cooperative learning is to encourage collaboration amonst students. To prepare students for their future, they need to be able to work with others on group projects. Another purpose for cooperative learning is to allow students to demonstrate what they know. They should be doing most of the work, not the teacher.


 * In my classroom I use a variety of cooperative learning activities in all of the subject areas. In science, the children either work in pairs, or in groups of 3 or 4 depending on the activity or the amount of materials I have available. Sometimes, I pick groups randomly with playing cards, draw names, or by categories. Other times I group them based on skill level for the task they will be doing. For example, if we are doing a research project, I may put three in a group. One child may be fluent in computer skills, another in skills, and the third in management skills. Another way I use cooperative learning is in math. I have one child create a problem and their partner has to solve it. Then they switch roles. I teach them math games to play together in cooperative groups too. For example, when learning multiplication I teach them how to play war. Or when practicing place value I teach them a game with dice and a place value mat in which they have to be the first one to reach 100. In social studies, I like to activate their prior knowledge with a think, pair, share activity. I also pair them up in heterogeneous groups to complete tasks.


 * A time when I was pleased using cooperative learning was when the children were experimenting with force and motion. I believe it worked well becasue of the planning I made ahead of time to group students based on abitlites, that I had role cards and recording sheets prepared, and that I gave clear instructions as to what my expectations were and how they would be graded.


 * I can think of a time when I used cooperative learning in social studies and it didn't go as well as I would have liked. I had the class gather information about the Great Lakes. I let the kids take the lead as to how they would like to gather the information and write their answers on the worksheet, and I randomly picked cards to generate groups. I was unhappy with the results because I had so many groups that had one or two group members that were doing all the work and the other group members were either fooling around, or arguing about who should do what job.


 * It's not really a question I have about cooperative learning, it's more about finding useful resourses in a timely manner to encourage using cooperative learning in the classroom. My time is precious so if someone else has great ideas that are already designed and ready to use, then I'm all for it.

**Apply and Reflect** I love the how easy it was to add information into the google docs "President" assignment. I am already thinking of all the way I can use this application in the classroom. In science, I can have my students research a plant, animal, natural resource and its uses. In social studies, I can have the my students add information about out state's symbols, rivers, counties. In math, I can have them add attributes of 3 dimensional shapes, fact families, conversions in measurement. There are so many possibilities.

The second part of this project was a challenge for me. I began my part of the assingment soon after class. My teamates were not able to contribute information until some time later. This made me anxious because, I have difficulty counting on others. I prefer to be held accountable for my own action and not that of a group. I can sympatize with students in my classroom that dislike working on collaborative projects.

As far as google docs, I found it frustrating to add information into our document. I could not figure out how to change the settings. Every time I typed a letter it seemed to save my changes. This made adding information slow and tedious.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ji_bPSMTsUgEzaq7D4ll9znVBvHoy9j3zZvfFVaV4AU/edit?hl=en_US#