Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 70

the group listen carefully and then, when called upon by the speaker, add a sentence
beginning with either "and" or "but. The teacher circulates among the groups, listening to
their discussions. He also sets up a recorder for each group so they could record their
discussions. When everyone in the group had taken a turn, they played back the
recording and made notes in their notebooks on the following:
*
What did I learn from the discussion?
*
What were the themes common to our research?
*
Who in my group has information I might use for my own search?
Bringing the class together, the teacher gives each group a chance to share their ideas.
He says, "As you spoke, I couldn't help but notice how many of your themes bring us
back to our overarching concepts." The pupils are then asked to fill in a feedback form
expressing their feelings, thoughts and opinions about the time spent together as a
team, the work done and what they feel they have achieved.
This self-evaluation is most essential and highlights the positive aspects of cooperative
learning as it brings the problematic cases to the teacher’s attention.
Here are some of the questions asked and some of the responses:
To the question “How did you work”? Some of the replies were:
“We discussed the ideas and assignments together”.
“We took turns contributing ideas”.
“We helped each other”.
To the question “How did you feel in your group”? Some of the replies were:
“It was great fun working together”.
“We learnt it’s possible to learn as a group”.
“We learnt what cooperative learning really means”.
And in contrast:
“I didn’t feel good because two studentds in my group got on my nerves”.
To the question ”What did you enjoy doing with the group”? some answered:
“We enjoyed reading and writing stories together”.
“I enjoyed speaking English with the group members”.
“I liked everything”.
The question: “What didn’t you like while working with your group”? is a very important
question since it focuses on problematic aspects of cooperative learning.
Here are some of the replies:
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“I didn’t always like reading with a partner”.
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“I didn’t like students talking instead of working”.
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“I didn’t like having to work for others”.
All in all, the amount of negative replies is minimal and the majority of the pupils love
cooperative learning lessons. Indeed, an outsider popping in to a cooperative learning
class would get the impression that he had inadvertently entered a beehive where each
member knows his role and is busily fulfilling it! Another advantage to cooperative
learning is that while the groups are working on a task, the teacher gets the opportunity
to sit with the weaker pupils and give them the extra attention they need. Cooperative
learning also changes the traditional role of the teacher as a “knowing all - spoonfeeding
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