Co-operative learning—a good teaching strategy

IN China almost everyone knows the allusion: “When a monk lives alone, he never worries about having water to drink as he himself has to solve the problem. When two monks live together, they help each other to carry water. But when three monks live together there is no water to drink.” And why is this? Because they don't co-operate.

I hate to admit it, but we Chinese do not excel at co-operating with each other. One of the reasons is that, from the beginning to the end of our schooling, our teachers have not paid enough attention to developing this trait. Year in, year out, we slowly get the bad habit of relying only on ourselves. Yet in real life, we encounter work that demands co-operating with others. We simply cannot function if we are unable to co-operate.

How can teachers rectify this situation in the classroom? I think co-operative learning is one of the best teaching strategies in developing the student's co-operative ability.

This is where co-operative learning comes in. This is a set of instructional methods in which students work in small mixed ability learning teams. The students in each group are responsible not only for learning the material that has been taught in the class but also for helping their teammates learn.

These groups require a lot of teamwork and interaction among students: there should be a mix of boys and girls; this way, students learn to work with one another, to listen to one another carefully and to respect each other’s ideas; students in their own groups have the opportunity to talk about subject content, to articulate their ideas and ask questions of one another; Everyone in the group is responsible for learning the material at hand. No one can just just sit and watch, everyone is involved and responsible for learning.

One of the major purposes of co-operative learning teams is to help students, younger students especially, work collaboratively with their peers, to share ideas, to listen to others ideas, to begin to see the joys of sharing a task with another person, to understand how assigning a number of people to a task sometimes makes accomplishing it a little bit faster and easier.

When teachers put students into co-operative learning groups, they constantly monitor their progress. She must stop by and say, “How are you getting along with your work?” “What’s new?” “Have you found anything different?” The teacher must be constantly walking around the classroom.

How to carry out a co-operative learning lesson

First, the teacher has to select a topic. Then he has to decide how big the groups should be and who should belong to which group. He is also responsible for deciding what the room is going to look like.

Then neccessary materials for each group are chosen and distributed. This is very important when planning for co-operative learning activity.

The groups should have a goal. It should be very specific and require positive interdependence.

Finally the teacher must determine whether the group is successful or not.

Here is an example. One possible topic can be“Draw a person and create a story about him or her.”Set the criteria as follows:

① Finish in 15 minutes.(10 points)

② Everyone participates in the work.(10 points)

③ The picture looks like a real person.(30 points)

④ The story contains no less than 15 sentences.(15 points)

⑤ There are no major mistakes.(10 points)

⑥ The content of the story is meaningful and logical.(25 points)

Each group has four members and. If possible, each group has two boys and two girls.

After that the teacher lets the students in each group vote for a leader. Let every students know that they have to stay in their groups. They must participate. They have to use good listening skills. It is their responsibility to work with others, to help each other, to co-operate with each other.

The students can not only build the co-operative ability, but also creativity through co-operative learning. Give it a try; you will be amazed by the benifits of this technique.

(深圳市寶安區(qū)沙井鎮(zhèn)教研室 許聰宏 Monday 3/19/2001 Shenzhen Daily)

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