Friday, January 24, 2014

Cooperative Learning Strategies





Cooperative Learning has been proven to be effective for all types of students, including academically gifted, mainstream students and English language learners (ELLs) because it promotes learning and fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of students. In fact, the more diversity in a team, the higher the benefits for each student. Peers learn to depend on each other in a positive way for a variety of learning tasks.
Students typically work in teams of four. This way, they can break into pairs for some activities, and then get back together in teams very quickly for others. It is important, however, to establish classroom norms and protocols that guide students to:
  • Contribute
  • Stay on task
  • Help each other
  • Encourage each other
  • Share
  • Solve problems
  • Give and accept feedback from peers

Some Cooperative Learning strategies

There are some popular strategies that can be used with all students to learn content (such as science, math, social studies, language arts, and foreign languages). However, they are particularly beneficial to ELLs for learning English and content at the same time. Most of these strategies are especially effective in teams of four:
  1. Round Robin
Present a category (such as "Names of Mammals") for discussion. Have students take turns going around the group and naming items that fit the category.
  1. Roundtable
Present a category (such as words that begin with "b"). Have students take turns writing one word at a time.
  1. Writearound
For creative writing or summarization, give a sentence starter (for example: If you give an elephant a cookie, he's going to ask for...). Ask all students in each team to finish that sentence. Then, they pass their paper to the right, read the one they received, and add a sentence to that one. After a few rounds, four great stories or summaries emerge. Give children time to add a conclusion and/or edit their favorite one to share with the class.
  1. Numbered Heads Together
Ask students to number off in their teams from one to four. Announce a question and a time limit. Students put their heads together to come up with an answer. Call a number and ask all students with that number to stand and answer the question. Recognize correct responses and elaborate through rich discussions.
  1. Team Jigsaw
Assign each student in a team one fourth of a page to read from any text (for example, a social studies text), or one fourth of a topic to investigate or memorize. Each student completes his or her assignment and then teaches the others or helps to put together a team product by contributing a piece of the puzzle.
  1. Tea Party
Students form two concentric circles or two lines facing each other. You ask a question (on any content) and students discuss the answer with the student facing them. After one minute, the outside circle or one line moves to the right so that students have new partners. Then pose a second question for them to discuss. Continue with five or more questions. For a little variation, students can write questions on cards to review for a test through this "Tea Party" method.
After each Cooperative Learning activity, you will want to debrief with the children by asking questions such as: What did you learn from this activity? How did you feel working with your teammates? If we do this again, how will you improve working together?
A simple way to start Cooperative Learning is to begin with pairs instead of whole teams. Two students can learn to work effectively on activities such as the following:
  1. Assign a math worksheet and ask students to work in pairs.
  2. One of the students does the first problem while the second acts as a coach.
  3. Then, students switch roles for the second problem.
  4. When they finish the second problem, they get together with another pair and check answers.
  5. When both pairs have agreed on the answers, ask them to shake hands and continue working in pairs on the next two problems.
Literature circles in groups of four or six are also a great way to get students working in teams. You can follow these steps:
  1. Have sets of four books available.
  2. Let students choose their own book.
  3. Form teams based on students' choices of books.
  4. Encourage readers to use notes, post-its, and discussion questions to analyze their books.
  5. Have teams conduct discussions about the book.
  6. Facilitate further discussion with the whole class on each of the books.
  7. Have teams share what they read with the whole class.
  8. For the next literature circles, students select new books.

44 Benefits of Collaborative Learning:
1.      Develops higher level thinking skills
2.      Promotes student-faculty interaction and familiarity
3.      Increases student retention
4.      Builds self esteem in students
5.      Enhances student satisfaction with the learning experience
6.      Promotes a positive attitude toward the subject matter
7.      Develops oral communication skills
8.      Develops social interaction skills
9.      Promotes positive race relations
10.  Creates an environment of active, involved, exploratory learning
11.  Uses a team approach to problem solving while maintaining individual accountability
12.  Encourages diversity understanding
13.  Encourages student responsibility for learning
14.  Involves students in developing curriculum and class procedures
15.  Students explore alternate problem solutions in a safe environment
16.  Stimulates critical thinking and helps students clarify ideas through discussion and debate
17.  Enhances self management skills
18.  Fits in well with the constructivist approach
19.  Establishs an atmosphere of cooperation and helping schoolwide
20.  Students develop responsibility for each other
21.  Builds more positive heterogeneous relationships
22.  Encourages alternate student assessment techniques
23.  Fosters and develops interpersonal relationships

Source:
2. http://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/c-learn/44.html

Practice Test 5 in Professional Education






1.     School curriculum reflects the world’s economic and political integration and industrialization. what does these point in curriculum development.

A.    The trend towards the classical approach to curriculum development
B.    The trend toward the globalization and localization
C.   The trend toward participatory curriculum development
D.   The shift in the paradigm of curriculum development from a process-oriented to a product-oriented one

2.    You choose cooperative learning as a teaching approach. What thought is impressed on your students? 

A.    Interaction is a must, but not necessarily face to-face interaction
B.    Student’s success depends on the success of the group
C.   Student’s individuality evaluate how effectively their group worked.
D.   The accountability for learning is on the group not on the individual 

3.    What principle is violated by overusing the chalkboard, as though it is the only education technology available?
A.    Isolated use
B.    Flexibility
C.   Variety
D.   Uniformity

4.    “When more senses are stimulated, teaching and learning become more effective.” What is an application of this principle?
A.    Appeal to student’s sense of imagination
B.    Use multisensory aids
C.   Make your students touch the instructional material
D.   Use audiovisual aids because the eyes and the ears are the most important senses in learning.
5.    Which is a classroom application of the theory of “operant conditioning”?
A.    Help student see the connectedness of facts, concepts, and principles
B.    Create a classroom atmosphere that elicits relaxation
C.   Reinforce a good behavior to increase the likelihood that the learner will repeat the response
D.   Make students learn by operating manipulatives 

6.    Here is the test item.
From the data presented in the table, form generalizations that are supported by the data”.
            Under what type of question does this item fall?
A.    Convergent
B.    Evaluative
C.   Application
D.   Divergent

7.    I want to teach concepts, patterns and abstractions. Which method will be MOST appropriate?
A.    Discovery
B.    Indirect instruction
C.   Direct instruction
D.   Problem solving

8.    Teacher A teaches English as a Second Language. She uses vocabulary cards, fill-in-the-blanks sentences, dialogues, dictation and writing exercises in teaching a lesson about grocery shopping. Based on this information, which of the following is a valid conclusion?
A.    The teacher wants to make her teaching easier by having less talk
B.    The teacher emphasizing reading and writing skills
C.   The teacher is teaching in a variety of ways because not all students learn in the same manner
D.   The teacher is applying Bloom’s hierarchy of cognitive learning

9.    Teacher A an experienced teacher, does daily review of past lessons in order to _____                       .
A.    introduce a new lesson
B.    reflect on how he presented the previous lessons
C.   provide his pupils with a sense of continuity
D.   determine who among his pupils are studying

10.  To teach the democratic process to the pupils, Biag Elementary School decided that the election of class officers shall be patterned after local elections. There are qualifications set for candidates, limited period for campaign and rules for posting campaign materials, etc. Which of the following did the school use?
A.    Symposium
B.    Simulation
C.   Role playing
D.   Philips 66

11.  Teacher S teaches a lesson in which students must recognize that ¼ is the same 0.25. They use this relationship to determine that 0.15 and 0.20 are slightly less than ¼. Which of the following concept/s is/are being taught?
A.    Numeration skills
B.    Place value of decimals
C.   Numeration skills of decimals and relationships between fractions and decimals
D.   Relationship between fraction and decimals

12.  To nurture students’ creativity, which activity should a teacher AVOID?
A.    Ask “hat if…” questions
B.    Ask divergent thinking questions
C.   Emphasize  the need to give right answers
D.   Be open to “out-of-this-world” ideas

13.  After reading an essay. Teacher B wants to help sharpen her students’ ability to interpret. Which of these activities will be most appropriate?
A.    Drawing conclusions
B.    Making inferences
C.   Getting the main idea
D.   Listing facts separately from opinion

14.  Bruner’s theory on intellectual development moves from inactive to iconic and symbolic stages. Applying Bruner’s theory. How would you teach?
A.    Be interactive in approach
B.    Begin with the abstract
C.   Begin with the concrete
D.   do direct instruction

15.  In a Social studies class. Teacher I presents a morally ambiguous situation and asks student what they would do. On whose theory is Teacher I’s technique based?
A.    Bandura
B.    Piaget
C.   Kohberg
D.   Bruner

16.  What does Gagne’s hierarchy theory propose for effective instruction?
A.    Be concerned with the socio-emotional climate in the classroom
B.    Teach beginning with the concrete
C.   Sequence instruction
D.   Reward good behavior

17.  Based on Freud’s theory, which operate/s when a student strikes a classmates at the height of anger?
A.    Ego
B.    Id
C.   Id and Ego interact
D.   Superego

18.  With assessment of affective learning in mind, which does NOT belong to the group?
A.    Cloze test
B.    Moral dilemma
C.   Reflective writing
D.   Diary entry

19.  If a teacher wants to measure her students’ ability to discriminate, which of these is an appropriate type of test item as implied by the direction?
A.    “Outline the Chapter on The Cell”.
B.    “Summarize the lesson yesterday”.
C.   “Group the following items according to shape”.
D.   “State a set of principle that can explain the following events”.

20.  Which can be said of Arielle who obtained a score of 75 out of 100 items in a Grammar objective test?
A.    She performed better than 25% of her classmates
B.    She answered 75 items in the test correctly
C.   Her rating is 75
D.   She answered 75% of the test items correctly




Answer Key:

1.      B
2.      B
3.      B
4.      B
5.      C
6.      D
7.      D
8.      C
9.      C
10.    B