Cooperative Learning: Working Together to Build Knowledge

          Cooperative learning is extremely important in the classroom.  It engages students in not only active learning, but development of social skills and collaboration as well.  As we all know, PIGS is an important aspect of cooperative learning.  We implemented these elements into our own whole-class lesson in the following ways:

 

Positive interdependence: will be facilitated by teachers announcing “each student will be responsible for helping the group work together in a positive way. If a group member is not performing their role, other group members should positively encourage this member to complete his task.

 

Individual accountability: will be facilitated through each student monitoring one another to ensure performance of the assigned roles.

Group Processing: A sheet will be given to each student containing a 1-5 rating scale (5 being the highest) on which students will rate themselves and each group member based on cooperation, contributions and performance of assigned roles.

 

Social Skills: Students have to engage in positive, efficient social interactions in order to achieve the goal of the task. Face -to -face interaction is key and students need to cooperate with each other in order to successfully collaborate.

 

          Throughout our lesson, students were assigned different roles, such as mapmaker, fact finder, writer, etc.  The roles changed with each round and students were expected to complete each task and create an end product in the form of a scrapbook.  The scrapbook would be a compilation of information on Lewis and Clark and the expansion westward.  Students genuinely enjoyed this task, but it was difficult to keep them on our planned pace.  We had to cut out a round because the students would not have been able to complete it.  It is critical to save time for presenting and reflecting after a cooperative lesson, therefore we had no choice but to shorten the task.  The lesson did not run as smoothly as we had hoped, but students certainly demonstrated their knowledge of Lewis and Clark and the expansion westward and were proud of their work.

 

          As we finish our fieldwork experience, I have to mention how amazing my group was!  I could not have asked for better people to work with.  Without them, this experience would not have been the same.  Love you girls and boy!!! = )

Learning Through Inquiry

          For our second day of whole class instruction, my group members and I taught using an inquiry lesson.  This type of lesson requires students to actively participate and develop a deeper understanding of the concept or concepts being taught.  Teachers facilitate learning as students investigate questions and construct meaning.  For our lesson, we developed the following central focus: Students will investigate three modes of transportation used throughout the expansion westward and decide, after inquiry-based research, which mode they believe to be most efficient. We provided students with folders full of articles and pictures and posed the question “which mode of transportation do you think was the best choice?” 

          Before sending the students to work in their groups, we reviewed inquiry skills as follows: identify the problem, formulate a question, state a hypothesis collect data, test data, and draw conclusions.  Once this was completed, students began their investigations.  At the end of the lesson, each group presented about one folder, or mode of transportation.  The decision was pretty much unanimous that trains were the best mode of transportation!

          Teaching this lesson was more difficult than our direct instruction lesson because it was hard to keep the students on task.  They often got distracted by the timer on the front board and were arguing over which role to be responsible for.  While each group finished their tasks and came to a solid conclusion, it did not go as well as we would have hoped.  While we moved the folders from table to table instead of moving the children (which saved us from a lot of chaos!), the room still got a bit loud.  Overall, students successfully came to a conclusion to either support or refute their hypotheses, but dealing with classroom control certainly was a learning experience for us!

 

Teaching Direct

         Hello blog followers!  It has been quite some time since I have posted and I think today is a great day to reflect back on my fieldwork experience.  As a member of Group 4, I taught a direct instruction lesson on Lewis and Clark and the expansion westward on March 17.  It was my first time teaching whole class and I could not have asked for a more supportive, hardworking group to have gone through this process with!  Leading up to our lesson, our group worked diligently all throughout our Spring Break.  We tossed around many ideas for guided and independent practice, as well as possible ways to state our development.  Our first thought was to develop a Prezi, instead of a boring old PowerPoint.  We found the perfect layout: it was a "journey," with footprints leading to each new slide.  But, as we added more and more information, the Prezi did not look as great we had expected. So, we went back to a simple PowerPoint.  This worked out much better...the classroom teacher even complimented our work on it! After these changes, my group also came up with some awesome ideas for independent practice.  We were going to have the children write journal entries on old-looking paper we created (thanks to Julie's artistic ability)!  But, this activity did not fit in well for direct instruction, so we ended up using a crossword puzzle activity.  The children did very well with it and showed us that they were able to understand the core concepts of the day's lesson.
          Our actual lesson went extremely well.  We equally split up our teaching time, with Julie leading the introduction because her enthusiasm instantly captures student attention.  We activated prior knowledge and transitioned nicely into our new topic of the expansion westward.  We stopped often to check for understanding, although we could have done so a little bit more.  Incredibly enough, our timing on the lesson was close to perfect and we were able to fit in every piece we needed to.  We even were able to have students come up to our map and have students sequence the journey of Lewis and Clark.  While there is room for improvement, Group 4 was thrilled with our first lesson.
           Looking back on this specific lesson and the work we put into it, I am extremely appreciative of my group.  We all did our part and adapted well to the constructive comments and tips given to us by Dr. Smirnova.  We followed the direct instruction outline very well and were successful with this method of teaching.  As my first whole class experience, I can truthfully state that this more than solidified my desire to become a teacher!