Adrian Price

Cooperative Lesson

EDP 621

April 21, 2004

 

 

Title: Rhyme Time

Grade Level: 6-8

Objective: Students will develop skills and expertise needed to participate effectively in group activities while learning a few styles of poetry.

Skills To Be Developed:

• Listening - Students must listen actively in order to learn the required material and be able to teach it to others in their original groups.
• Speaking - Students will be responsible for taking the knowledge gained from one group and repeating it to new listeners in their original groups.
• Cooperation - All members of a group are responsible for the success of others in the group.
• Reflective thinking - To successfully complete the activity in the original group, there must be reflective thinking at several levels about what was learned in the expert group.
• Creative thinking - Groups must devise new ways of approaching, teaching and presenting material.

 

Materials

Literature text

Examples of specified poetic style

Paper

Pencil

 

Procedures

1.    Define the group project on which the class will be working. This teacher led activity explains the project and answers any question.

2.    Randomly break the class into groups of 4 students each, and assign a number (1 to 4) to students in each group. This teacher led activity ensures that the groups are heterogeneous and cuts down on lag time.

3.    Assign each student a poetic style in which he/she will become an expert. This teacher led activity assigns specific duties to each member of the group and ensures participation from all group members.

·       The topics will be related facets of the general content theme.

·       For example, the general theme will be poetry and the topics will be quatrain (student #1), sonnet (student #2), terza rima (student #3), and acrostic (student #4).

4.    Rearrange the students into expert groups based on their assigned numbers and poetic style. This student led activity provides the opportunity for group learning and sharing with teacher guidance.

·       Provide the experts with the materials and resources necessary to learn about their poetic style.

·       The experts will be given the opportunity to obtain knowledge through reading, research and discussion.

5.    Reassemble the original groups.

·       Experts then teach what they have learned to the rest of the group.

·       Take turns until all experts have presented their new material.

6.    Each member of the group will create an original poems demonstrating their comprehension of the given poetic styles. Groups present results to the entire class for sharing and assessment.

 

 

 

 

 

Positive Interdependence: Each student has a role and they all need to contribute in order to complete the final project. There is no competition, as the group wants to work together to get their information and create poetry that is unique.

Individual Accountability: Each student is responsible for their part of the research and presentation of that research to the group.

Face To Face Interactions: Each student is required to work cooperatively in two separate groups and collaborate with each other as they alternately gather and then teach the information to each other.

Heterogeneous Grouping: Both groups are selected to represent a diverse group dynamic.

Social Skills: The students must be able to work together by listening to each others ideas, taking turns, clarifying and guiding each other in the right direction.

 

 

In the Jigsaw model the student becomes a member of both a learning group and a research team. After determining the learning group's goal, the members join research teams to learn about a particular piece of the learning puzzle. Each puzzle piece must be solved to form a complete picture. Research can take many forms. The teacher may want to prepare "expert sheets" that outline readings and questions to obtain the information needed. Or the students can use their own strategies to glean information through library research, interviewing experts, or experimentation. Upon completion of the expert teams' work, the members return to their original learning groups and share the results. Class discussion, a question-and-answer session, or a graphic or dramatic production will allow the groups to share their findings with the class at large