KAGAN© COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRUCTURES

What is Cooperative Learning?

Cooperative learning is a way of delivering your content. Students work in teams of four. The teams are hetrogenously formed .

Lessons are designed such that all members of each team participate simultaneously and: are held individually accountable for their own learning, participate equally so ensuring the success for all and learn to support and value each other both socially and academically. This creates a more effective teaching and learning environment. The ability of pupils to work with others is an important life skill. Working with others actually improves individuals understanding, stretching the high ability and lower ability pupils alike.

What are Cooperative Learning Structures?

‘Structures’ are easy to learn series of repeatable steps that can be used across the whole curriculum to develop mastery (Revision, Review, Recall, Practice etc.), thinking skills (Problem Solving, Evaluating, Analysing, Synhesising etc.) communication skills or for information sharing, teambuilding and classbuilding. Many structures are useful across more than one domain, so for example at the same time as you are reviewing content using Quiz Quiz Trade you can also be working on Classbuilding improving the class tone. As the structures are content free they can be used time and again thus breaking the ‘replacement cycle’. Once you master structures you will be able to make every lesson a Cooperative Learning lesson.

Why use Cooperative Learning Structures?

Delivering your lesson content using Cooperative Learning Structures is a way of easily increasing the amount of time your pupils spend ‘on task’. Along with this increased engagement come all the benefits (See BENEFITS) of facilitating the learning of a class where pupils are all actively and simultaneously engaged in learning.Structures minimise the opportunity for pupils to become distracted, disruptive and then disaffected by giving them the skills to work with others and to learn independently of the ‘teacher’. (See Win Win Discipline ). Structures enable students to acquire social skills in real-life situations; social skills are embedded in the structures so students, for example, learn turn taking, active listening, empathy, tolerance, respect etc. All without taking any time away from teaching our existing curriculum.