First and next unit of Cooperative Learning

Added by Vicky Goodyear at 08:25 on Wednesday 11 January 2012

After your initial lessons of using Cooperative Learning with your classes, what have been your initial experiences? and learning from these experiences, what will you plan to do in the initial lessons of the next unit? 

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4 Comments

On Thursday 12 January at 20:40 Vikki Keeping said...

My initial experiences of using cooperative learning through learning teams have mostly been positive. My 7s have taken to it so well that I didn't have to say anything to them today and as I walked out to the field all teams warmup were well underway and put my year 9s efforts the shame. My 7s are all working independently from me and working through all tasks so well that today I wondered if they'd notice if I wasn't there. Their conversations during their debrief are in depth and take into account everyone's performances within their roles and how they can improve for next lesson. My 9s on the whole are doing well and motivation for lessons on the whole is high which is nice as they were not keen to move onto football. However I am finding the 9s are a lot more dependent on me and most groups will continually ask questions to reassure themselves that they are doing the right thing. Lesson 3 had girls asking to swap groups and they were finding it difficult to be working with other girls outside of their friendship groups for continuous lessons so for lesson 4 accountability tasks to get everyone in the groups realising they effect the rest of the groups success will have to be planned and included. All in all really enjoying it.

On Monday 16 January at 19:36 Vicki Scholes said...

Today i had my first lessons with the groups i am working with doing Learning Team in a HRF unit. Due to our timetabling i am sharing the group with another teacher and we have planned the unit together and have a good detailed handover with each other inbetween the lessons we take. I did lesson Zero and my colleague did lesson 1. Today was lesson 2, my yr 7s worked well and i can start to see good team work happening, i feel they were still very dependant on me though, which does contrast what Vikki felt above. A huge observation i made was that some students struggled to undertake their role due to their poor literacy skills- some found it difficult to read the task cards, it did have pictures too- the others in the group instead of helping her or giving her extra time just took over her role. I had to spend a fair bit of time with that group to ensure that this didnt happen. My year 8s on the other hand were fab!! They were all on task working through their fitness test, fullfilling their role amazingly well- some with a little bit of prompting to refer back to the roles sheet. Last lesson some groups didnt bond well and there were tears, this was not evident today and co operation with each other was easily observed. The issue with the 8s was the group proccessing evaluation at the end of the lesson. This was done very quickly and i felt had no impact, with some students wondering off task. At the end of the lesson i did spend 5 minutes reinforcing the group processing so hopefully will have an impact intheir lesson tomorrow. Two enjoyable lessons and look forward to seein them improve further next lesson.

On Monday 20 February at 22:30 Ashley Casey said...

Vicki, this seems very familiar to me. Sometime different groups just 'get it' better than others while at other times the simplest thing comes across as being a little too complicated for the kids. Remember that like you they are probably experiencing this for the first time and it might feel a bit strange to them. School is something that they understand and they know the rules now (especially having been at school for eight years or more) and here are you changing the rules. You need to help them understand the new things that you are doing and they need to be reassured that if they learn a new way of being taught then it will be to their advantage...change itself is challenging but (as they say) a change is as god as a rest.

On Monday 20 February at 22:35 Ashley Casey said...

Vikki, I remember the same thing at school. The year 7s who were new to school took cooperative learning in their stride but the year 10s...now they were a real challenge. They 'knew' and 'understood' how lessons worked...I told them what to do and they did it...and now here I was asking them to take part... in fact asking them to think in PE. I remember one group saying that they preferred tennis because they didn't have to think. It took time to break down their expectations of physical education and what it meant to 'do' PE but with the year 7s there was less history between us and it was easy to make changes that they wanted to engage with.

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