45. Teaching Strategies for Cooperative Learning in the Classroom

Getting students to work together through group work and collaborative learning experiences can add a lot of engagement and joy to your classroom environment. However, that doesn't mean you won't have to clear some hurdles regarding behavior, noise levels, and participation first. In this episode, you will learn why cooperative learning experiences are essential to learning and how to overcome the obstacles to getting your class to work together in small groups so they can learn from one another.

Resources mentioned in the episode to help you create effective cooperative learning experiences in the classroom - for any subject and grade level: 

Group Work Roles Cards, Slides, and Rubrics

Voice Level Posters for Classroom Management

Behavior Management Stop Sign Cards

Get your copy of Teachaholic: The 7-Day MindSET Shift to Conquer Burnout, Build Life-Changing Boundaries, and Reignite Your Love for Teaching at www.erinsponaugle.com/book.

You can download the Teachaholic Action Guide to begin your journey back from burnout here.

Download your FREE checklist, The Great 88: Rules, Routines, and Expectations to Go Over and Over, and feel confident establishing classroom management.

For more resources on classroom management, time management, and preserving mental well-being to avoid teacher burnout, visit www.erinsponaugle.com.

Find more upper elementary classroom resources by visiting Next Chapter Press on Teachers Pay Teachers.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Being the teacher isn't what it used to be. The good news is you don't have to figure it out on your own. If you're looking for truth, inspiration, and tips for success in the classroom and beyond, you're in the right place. It's time to turn the page to the future of the profession. This is the next chapter for teachers podcast. Hello everyone, this is Aaron Spinagle for the next chapter for Teachers Podcast. This is episode 45, getting on up there. And I hope wherever you're listening to today, you are somewhere warm and safe. Where I am, it is snowing and icing. So if that is you, I hope all is well. I don't know about you, but it looks like we're going to be having some snow days this week, so we won't be with our students in the traditional sense. But for today's episode, since we're talking about things that affect students here to start out the year, we're going to talk about something that we all try to do in our classrooms at some point or in some capacity, but it can often be a thing that causes you a lot of stress or a lot of uh troubleshooting to get it to be effective in your classroom. And that's group work or cooperative learning. So when you give your students projects or assignments or activities like experiments where they need to work together, they have to interact in order to learn, it can be very good for them. It's a part of learning and a part of learning how to function with other people, but it certainly can try your patience and make you question whether it's worth uh trying to implement your classroom based on how effective you feel you're being with your class at that time. So let's talk a little bit today about uh cooperative learning and how to make it work in your classroom so that it benefits your students and it doesn't drive you crazy or make you want to shut yourself in a closet or run away or uh any of those things. Um, because we we usually can find a way to really make group work or cooperative learning activities a fun way to have kids collaborate with each other and a way to really bring joy and excitement to your classroom. However, getting there can be kind of a rocky road. So for group work or collaborative learning or cooperative learning, whatever you choose to call it to call it for your room, three to five students in a group is kind of ideal. My favorite number to have in a group is four, like a nice even number, because I liked to do, and I know this is a Kagan thing, but I was calling it this long before, long before that even was a uh thing the Kagan came Keg the Kagan Learning Company can put some of these these terms, but a shoulders partner, the person you're sitting right beside, and then the face partner who's right across from you. I always liked having kids and or I like having kids in groups of four so that they can easily pair up that way within a group if needed. But three to five students in a group is ideal to have them work with each other and interact in order to demonstrate learning or to discover things uh that you're teaching them. So why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we choose to do group work or collaborative learning in our classrooms? Well, it's a great chance to have kids learn from each other because we can't do it all as teachers, and it can be exhausting being up there all day, every day, teaching the kids everything you know and they need to and they need to learn, but sometimes they just need to get it from each other and to experience what you're teaching them from a different standpoint. And sometimes the best teachers in your classrooms can be your students. Amazingly enough, sometimes they teach them teach each other some things we wish they wouldn't. But uh, when you're teaching something and you want them to experience it or apply it, collaborative learning is often the way to go. It also lets you differentiate and include students very easily. It's almost like it's seamless when they're interacting, or how you can place them within a group so that kids can learn from each other or experience each other's strengths and help each other uh build out, build upon the things that they're trying to improve. And and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about last week or what I brought up last week with helping students deal with fear, only in a little bit different sense. You know, we need to teach kids how to communicate with each other, and kids need to learn how to work with one another through their differences, even though we are all coming from vastly different backgrounds. You still have to get along with each other and learn about how to value one another and work for each other for a common purpose. So with the digital age and social media and ways that our kids can communicate without having to see each other face to face, that's caused a whole other set of problems. But when you have the opportunity in your classrooms to have kids communicate and look at each other and work with each other in person, collaborative learn collaborative learning is a great way to go and achieve that. So they can learn to work with others, but like I said, it can't just be you all day long doing all the work. That's how we get burnt out and tired and just flat out exhausted halfway through the year. And if you are using your snow days this week to recoup from that because winter break was not enough, no, no shame here, no, no judgment. But we let our kids do that work of teaching each other or working with one another to learn. We allow them to be creative and to take responsibility for their learning. They become active learners instead of just absorbing everything that we're telling them or teaching them, or or in the one-to-one technology age here, getting it all from their iPad or their digital program. You know, there's a lot of life to experience off the screen. And sometimes all of the digitalization that we have put into classrooms limits that. So these opportunities that we give our students to collaborate in the classroom or cooperate with one another, they're vital. They're much needed, but we have to do it in a way that makes it effective and doesn't drive a doesn't drive us teachers crazy. I said what I said, because it could happen. So along with that, why why do we kind of avoid this sometimes? Or why might it might be something that as a teacher you're like, maybe not, maybe I just not do the group work thing. Well, we're gonna talk about those, and I will talk about also ways that you can improve that or you can avoid that through different strategies. So, reasons that I hear why teachers do not like group work, cooperative learning, whatever you want to call it, noise. Yes, noise. I mean, I get it because kids can be loud, and when kids don't get to go outside for recess, or like this time of the year when it's not uh weather uh appropriate for them to be outdoors, or maybe if you live somewhere where they do go outside for recess when it's really cold, that's awesome. We have like a set temperature, if it gets below that, they can't go outside in my area. But when kids get to be contained all day and then you want to give them something in the class where they get to talk to one another, it quickly devolves into almost like recess 2.0. I mean, I get it. I taught fifth grade and I know how how it can go from zero to 60. And that noise factor, when you are trying to um also be respectful of the other classrooms around you, along with your own needs, can be like the deal breaker. Totally okay, and I understand it because I am someone personally who does not like loud noises, much less having them come from 20 plus students. So, how do we combat at combat that? Or how did I, or how do I still even as an art teacher manage that? That I did that through, or I do that through voice levels. So there's voice level zero, which is no talking, voice level one, whisper, voice level two, just table talk or group talk. That means the people in your group can hear you, but not the entire classroom. It's something you have to teach your students, it's something you have to practice what those things sound like. I always kept it at voice, kept it to voice level zero, voice level one, voice level two. I didn't call it like spy talk or grocery store voice. I never I never did that because some kids don't always have a frame of reference for those things, especially in the age of picking up your food or picking up your uh uh groceries, DoorDash, you know, not not everybody gets to go or goes and experience the stores like they used to. So I just kept it to one zero one two. Uh but just with those three levels, I was able to teach my students how to monitor their own voices and how to stay at an acceptable level so that we could still learn within a cooperative activity and not break the sound barrier, because it can happen and it does happen, but you can use like that voice level zero, one, or two as kind of your volume control in the classroom when you are doing group work so that it doesn't get out of control. So very closely related to noise is just behavior in general with group work because when kids are with each other and they're going to have to interact and you've got different personalities, the behavior is going to be popping at some point, or somebody's going to burst somebody's bubble. And it's, I don't want to say that you can perfectly avoid everything. There are ways that we can group our students, or you know, like playing chess sometimes, isn't it? Where you keep certain kids away from each other. You just know that that's not gonna work, and that's okay. Uh, because we have to do what's best for everyone in our room, but e you can have the best group of students or the nicest team put together of personalities, and then you have somebody that's just not having a great day, and it's they they get off they get off track. You know, just they're they're people just like us. We don't always get along with everybody, or we have times when somebody's aggravating us, kids are no different, and their brains are less devel developed than ours, so it's going to happen. So, how do you combat behavior issues with group work? You know, we have to just be on our toes as we're teaching and monitoring. That's part of what we can focus more on when our students are doing group work or in collaborative settings. We can kind of work to, I don't want to say be the chaos control, but be the chaos control. But uh the best way to deal with this is before you even start group work to talk about the rules and the norms. How do you expect them to act? Practice it, model it, even like show them what you don't want them to do. Like I always call it being a crabby McNabby in art. Uh, you know, you don't take things out of people's hands, even things like that. You have to teach all the little things that you do and don't want to see. And you have to continue to go over it. So it may be every time you start a group project or a group work activity, you need to go over these rules again or have them posted in your classroom so that they are easily, easily referred to as needed. But it can be done and it can be monitored. And like I said, if students are doing the work of active learning through collaborative activities, you as a teacher can be there to do the classroom management so that you are still involved, it's not like you piece out when they're doing group work, you are still able to focus on what they need to be successful as they are learning. And another big one for getting kids to collaborate, what may make you twitchy, is the participation. So we've all done a group project, even as adults, where somebody does the bulk of the work, somebody sits off to the side, is not doing what they should be doing, and someone just pops in there at the end and acts like they, whoa, they really helped out when really they were distracting or not as effective the entire time. So, yeah, I know the kids and kids are no different. I mean, they're just us in smaller bodies and and less developed brains. It it happens. So, how can we combat this when we're trying to get kids to collaborate and connect with one another and learn and be active learners and participants in the process? I do this, and especially when I taught fifth grade, through jobs and responsibilities. So everybody in the group has a different job, has a different responsibility that they are responsible for in recording and showing accountability for. So nobody gets to sit there and do nothing. In order to make it happen, make whatever the outcome is supposed to be, they have to contribute in some way. And there has to be some proof of that contribution. It can't just be, oh, you said you did it. Where is the proof that you did it? And that role or that contribution is going to play play a role in how well, how successful the group is. So if we make them all demonstrate that they're learning, still put a piece of the puzzle in, does it mean that everybody's always going to get it right every time? Of course not. There's always going to be somebody that's going to need some reinforcement. And you can do that through talking about the rules. You can stop them and talk about what you um expect from them when they're not doing what you want them to do to be on task. But those jobs and those responsibilities within a group project or within a group activity can help everybody feel that they can that they're responsible for contributing in some way. It keeps everyone accountable. And those jobs don't have to be the same jobs they have every time you do a group project. They can rotate. Uh, maybe they get to choose sometimes, maybe maybe depending on your class, they don't get to choose. But you can also assign them based on the strengths in that group so that even the students that maybe uh instructionally are a little bit lower, that they're doing something that is their strength, they still feel that they're having an equal contribution or effective contribution to what they're working on. And I say these are I'm trying to give these in a way that are very universal, that you could apply to any content area or any grade level, because they can be. So, how do we do this? Are there any resources out there? Of course there are. I've got a couple there here that I can share with you. So I haven't done this for a while, but I will share with you some things that I have created that are available to you that you could implement in your classroom starting tomorrow, or if it's going to be a snow day or a snow week for you whenever you go back to school. Um, one of them is the grade 88, different routines and uh expectations to go over and over with your students. It's a free download on aaronspinagle.com. There's no um set, it's not really for group work, so it's not really set for a certain it's it's something that you could use universally all year long, any grade level things that you can go over with your students to ensure that you have automaticity and routines and that you are being explicit in the instructions that you give them or the expectations of them rather, so that you can have a classroom that runs smoothly and allows you to focus on teaching because there's another lobber there to teach. I know. I get it, trust me. So another thing that I have created for you, you can access the next three things on Teachers Pay Teachers. They are all economically priced because I get it. But one of them is I have voice level posters for voice level zero, one, and two that you can either show as a presentation to your students to teach them to your students. You can make posters out of them to reference them throughout the year. It is a snap to get that started and also to model it and to practice it so it becomes routine in your classroom, applying that voice level zero, one, and two to whatever situation is needed for. Along with that, I also have these stop signs that I've made. They're color-coded for different uh things that you might need to stop kids for, like getting along with each other or things, what noise levels, things like that. Or you can just use the red stop sign that's in there to help students reflect on their thinking. There's a little slideshow that goes along with it so that uh you can teach that to your students because everything has to be explicitly taught. We can't just throw it up and say, hey kids, this is what we're doing today. We have to teach it like a lesson. If you want it, you gotta teach it. And then one of my favorite resources that is very has been very well received. It's group work roll cards and present in a presentation. But it's way more than that. It's a way to assign students to a role within a group. I I have a presentation that goes along with it, but it's something that you could use for any subject, any grade level to show kids, you know, what their role is within the group, to keep everybody responsible. There are rubrics and reflection guides that go along with it so that the kids can think about what they're doing within the group, and it's also a great way to teach kids how to collaborate with one another. And like I said, you can apply it to any content area. So you could use it for science when you're having kids work on experiments, you could use it for reading groups. It is very universal. I try to make things that will help a lot of people. So those couple resources are things that you can access on teachers pay teachers to help you get your group work and collaborative learning underway so that you can uh use that experience with your students to help them learn without having to be straight up chaos. So just some tips to get uh any of those resources started or to just implement better effective group work uh strategies in your classroom in general. Like I said, if you want it, you have to teach it. So you have to teach kids or show kids what you expect when they're working with one another. I like to start with a small group activity or a seasonal activity to just if you're gonna start implementing voice levels or group work roles at um any given time. Something that is maybe not to say it's not academic, but something like we have Valentine's Day coming up, so either like a Valentine's activity. Just have them do that in a group or in a small group activity so that they can practice it before they implement it for your math lesson or for a social studies lesson. Uh like I said, if you want it, you gotta show them how it's gonna be and re and reinforce it often. You have to practice the norms, you have to show them the jobs. So some of the jobs that you might have. might be a reporter or recorder or someone who does the materials or the uh measuring depends on what the lesson is that you're teaching but you have to model what that looks like to them and they need to see it from you. You not just hear that how it's supposed to be they need to see you physically do it sometimes and that can be funny. I mean I like to cut up with the kids sometimes so I have no trouble doing that. But uh you have to review what that looks like before you get started. And when it doesn't work out because it will sometimes they're kids they're learning how to be in this world you gotta stop you got to reflect and reinforce it and start again. So group work cooperative learning trying to hit all the words that you might use for this collaboration it's a very good learning experience for kids. It's essential to functioning not only in school but in work and throughout this world getting along with each other and being able to interact properly but it does take some work. It does take some time and some effort uh to make that happen in your room but it's never too late to start. It's never too late to show kids or to give kids the opportunity to work with one another in a way that's effective and can help them contribute to learning in the classroom. So give it a try check out those resources apply that next time you see your students in person and I'll talk to you next time that's all for this episode of the Next Chapter for Teachers podcast. If you like what you heard be sure to rate subscribe and leave a review. Join us next time we turn the page to the future of the profession. Until then remember to be different but more importantly be the difference. And I'll see you in the next chapter