Guided meditation is a brilliant way to embed those absolutely essential messages. If you will indulge me, I will now share a teaching method that has nothing to do with Cooperative Learning: Guided Meditation. Although this specific example was presented to adults at an Ignite teachmeet (#IgniteTM) in Great Yarmouth, it will help your pupils... Continue Reading →
Without her mentioning Cooperative Learning once, Ms Jessica Brosnan, of the Teacher Development Trust, has unwittingly written a better article on why Cooperative Learning should be adopted as a whole school ethos than I could. Ms Brosnan's original text is italicised. (...) Many school leaders struggle to create a CPD programme that is relevant and engaging for all... Continue Reading →
This video deals with some of the knee-jerk reactions to "student-centred learning" as being unmanageable, ineffective and demanding for teachers. (From the introduction to “Islam in RE: Religious Literacy & Controversy through Enquiry” 17 March 2014 in Norwich). . Open this video in new window . Structural Cooperative Learning consists of students in small hand-picked teams or... Continue Reading →
Workshop debriefing: As I have states in numerous places, the candid verbalization of opinions during the debate gives teachers a unique insight into the knowledge and thought processes of each individual student as thet work through tasks and materials. Also, a lot of finer points related to personality and social skills are brought to the fore and... Continue Reading →
Breaking thinking patterns However, to guide students out of the dialectic of old-school caning vs. radical Summerhill I followed a class vote on which positive skills (including being well-read, inspiring, having oratory skills, critical thinking and caring about one's community) with the infamous immigrant rant from American History X to contextualize and block knee-jerk reactions to the question "should we be critical of SCL and alloting... Continue Reading →
Continuing our thread on good teaching in a perhaps less than good setting as well as our discussion on collaborative vs. cooperative learning; an engaged and engaging colleague from a local school has recently pointed me towards one of the more potent alternative forms of collaborative learning that may be snuck into the ordinary classroom without... Continue Reading →
As a further note to Dr. Lawson's comment on teachers subverting a cumbersome educational system to create amazing teaching, I just came across an article on Personal Learning Network about the distinction between collaborative learning and Cooperative Learning. The author defines Cooperative Learning as an "educational approach that emphasises teacher involvement in setting goals and... Continue Reading →
A note on nomenclature Everyone agrees that cooperative learning means groups of students interacting in order to learn. According to Laurel S. Walter's 2000 article there is also even an agreement on two key components that must be present for a group process to be termed cooperative learning: promoting interdependence and individual accountability (i.e. avoiding... Continue Reading →
cooperativelearning.works 