New Beginnings with Cooperative Grouping!

New Beginnings with Cooperative Grouping!
Cooperative grouping, engagement, and learning through collaborative conversations are SUCH   powerful and essential ways to teach kids to love learning! I have learned throughout the years that not only are these strategies beneficial for your students, they actually make your job as a teacher soooooo much easier(yes really!), and rewarding in the long run.  The  amount of time it takes in the beginning of the year to teach the students these structures and routines will DEFINITELY pay off in the end, for both you the teacher, and your students!			Students using the Kagan “Rally-Coach” strategy This is where you assign a partnership a set of problems/questions/activities and they take turns watching and listening to their partner solve/answer (or coach) a problem. First partner A solves and coaches, while partner B listens and praises them when done.  Next partner B solves and coaches while partner A listens/watches, and praises them when done. This strategy ensure student success as they are teaching and learning from each other.
Throughout this blog, you will gain insight on what collaborative conversations and cooperative grouping structures look like, sound like, and the power of learning that is behind them! I will explain my process along way so that you too can implement these structures with your own students, and then sit back and watch them learn, grow and be successful!!
	There’s nothing more disheartening than standing in front of the class, teaching your heart out, and then having the kids stare at you like little deer in the headlights when you ask them to answer a simple question about what they just “learned,” and they can’t.  Any time this happens it is a HUGE indication to me as a teacher that the students are completely disengaged, and that I need to change gears and involve them in a cooperative learning strategy. Engagement is KEY to student learning.  If students are not engaged, they have most likely checked out, which means they are not learning :-(.  Using a multitude of Kagan strategies (aka cooperative grouping strategies) is one of the best ways to keep students engaged and actively participating the lesson and their learning.
“Individual commitment to a group effort- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” -Vince Lombardi
Collaborative conversations via the use of highly engaging cooperative learning structures is CRUCIAL for student success, and also for students to be held accountable for their OWN learning as well as contributing to the learning of their peers around them!
	Not only does keeping them engaged help them to learn, working collaboratively with their peers and discussing ideas really gets their little brains working, thinking, and growing!  You want to start small.  You cannot expect students to walk in and just be able to work together in a meaningful and useful way. At the start of the year you have to put procedures in place that help students get to know each other and feel comfortable with one another. For example, the first week of school I had them create “me” bags at home, containing items that they felt described who they are.  I put them into groups and had them take turns going around in their group showing/talking about their items.This helps to build a safe environment where students feel comfortable speaking and listening to each other, and we all get to learn a bit about each other. I put a variety of response frames on the board, and each student in the group had to either comment or ask a question to the person presenting. This is the first step into “training” them to be active participants in a group conversation.  Afterwards, I allowed students to share out with the class about something they had learned about someone at their table, and one little boy says, “I learned that Joshua’s favorite color is red, and I’ve been in his class the last 2 years and never knew that!” This activity is a great way to begin teaching the kids how to be an active participant in a group, how to converse in a respectable manner, and most importantly it builds their self-esteem and confidence when speaking with their peers. Collaboratively Learning, Megan Brown megan.brown@omsd.net