FHS
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How Teachers are using Co-operative Learning
Co-operative Learning is happening all around Forrester. This article shares good practise for other teachers and will give all readers a taster of how this teaching strategy is implemented in our school.
"A co-operative learning project I have used for the past few years in S1 History (Ancient Egypt topic) is the one on ‘King Tutankhamen’s death quest’. My class is divided in 4-5 groups of experts who are supposed to be working for the Egyptian government in a quest to find out how Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen died. Their groups consist of an archaeologist, a historian, a history professor, a reporter and a medical examiner. They need to all study relevant primary and secondary sources in order to first reach a decision. The groups have to create and present their findings to the rest of the class. All presentations are evaluated by the students and a winning group is decided by the class.
Through this project I have learned that students can be great helpers of each other and they learn what collective responsibility means in the undertaking of a serious task. They motivate each other and clarify information for each other and learn and memorise huge amounts of information through a relatively stress free and pleasant process. " - Miss Serifi.
"For me, with the seniors, when working on critical essay revision, I chose 6 past paper questions (specifically designed to challenge them with choice, focus and theme), 2 on each of the three genres – poetry, drama and prose. The class broke up into their working groups of 4/5 pupils. I timed them, 5 minutes at each station, and their task was to write an introduction specific to the question.
Once this was completed we carried out a class feedback session – what problems did they face? How could these problems be overcome? How would they build this into their revision strategy? The groups then merged – one person from each group joining to form a new group - using the marking criteria discussed and shared in a previous lesson. They then looked at an example introduction written for each of the three genres in the last task.
Their new task was to discuss the merits and highlight points for improvement, using the marking criteria. Feedback was given as a class and revision pointers noted. In these two lessons, everyone in the group had a role – leader, organiser, reporter and scribe." - Mrs Collins
“In S1 French, we did an activity which required co-operative skills within groups. The pupils had to find out information about an imaginary town in France with instructions on places they had to go to or find and directions. All pupils had different information and sets of directions which they had to pull together in order to reach their destinations – each group having a different destination.
The activity incorporated all four language skills – the productive: speaking and writing; and the receptive: listening and reading. This involved all of the pupils in the group making a contribution and ensured maximum effort from each of them in fulfilling the task.” – Mr Buchanan
"Recently our s3 cohort focussed on “Identity” as a theme across units. Firstly they looked at some poetry including Scots. They analysed poetry and then created their own Identity poem in which they shared a little of themselves. They also created an identity brick which were displayed downstairs in the cafeteria on our “identity wall”. These bricks had “I am” statements on them to show what the s3s thought of themselves. This was a prelude to the main unit which was also focussed on the theme of “Identity”.
In groups the s3s had to work together to focus on “Scottish Identity”. Stereotypes and history were identified during class discussions and were brought in by looking at how advertisements were made using these. The groups had to work together to research, brainstorm ideas, create storyboards, video footage and finally to use imovie or movie maker to pull all their work together to make an advertisement and edit it to make it look as professional as possible. We did not set any one pupil a specific role; instead we let the groups figure this out for themselves, in doing this the groups met the highest of expectations. They were able to identify their own key strengths and delegate jobs so that everyone had a part to play in this production. It was great to allow pupils the freedom to choose what it was they were good at and could shine in.
We took this another step forward and shared skills with other classes. As English get the s3 year group all at the same time, we found that giving pupils a brief for the period and having teachers assigned to rooms (both classrooms and computer rooms) allowed the pupils to go where they needed, when they needed and it worked well for this unit. This allowed pupils to learn from other pupils as those who knew how to use the editing software got to demonstrate their knowledge and share their wisdom. Other pupils got to show they were excellent leaders as they organised their group, arranged materials and resources for their adverts and directed the action that was being planned and performed in front of them. Other pupils showed their creativity through the script writing, story board creation and music selection. Over all it was a great experience for all involved!" - Miss Quirke
Mr Buchanan
Ms Serifi
Miss Paterson
Miss Quirke and Mrs Collins