Cooperative learning&Concept mapping

Dr Funda Ornek BTC, Spring 2012

 Course: TC2SCT 221 Enrollment key: tc2sct221.funda

 Cooperative learning as a teaching strategy which involves students participating in small group activities that promote specific learning outcomes and in the process, fosters synergistic interaction among group members .

Cooperative Learning enhances student learning by:

providing a shared cognitive set of information between students, motivating students to learn the material, ensuring that students construct their own knowledge, providing formative feedback, developing social and group skills necessary for success outside the classroom, and promoting positive interaction between members of different cultural and socio-economic groups

 Cooperative learning groups in classrooms goes beyond achievement, acceptance of differences, and positive attitudes Being able to perform technical skills such as reading, speaking, listening, writing, computing, problemsolving, etc., are valuable but of little use if the person cannot apply those skills in cooperative interaction with other people in career, family, and community settings. it helps teacher to better manage hands-on science in the classroom

Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning

Positive Interdependence Face-to- Face Interaction Individual Accountability Interpersonal And Small Group Skills Group Processing
Taken from: Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom (Revised Edition) D.W. Johnson, R.T. Johnson and Edythe Johnson Holubec. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986

Positive Interdependence
Students must feel they need each other in order to complete the groups task

Mutual Goals Joint Rewards Shared Materials and Information Assigned Roles

Face-to-Face Interaction
Discussing Summarizing Explaining Elaborating Receiving Feedback

Individual Accountability
Teams succeed when:

Every member has learned the material

Every member has helped complete tasks Frequently teachers assess individual learning

Interpersonal and Small Group Skills

Communication Leadership Decision-making
Conflict Management Active Listening Challenging Ideas Not People Compromising

Group Processing
Giving students the time and the procedures to analyze how well their teams are functioning with:

Learning tasks Social skills Self-assessment

Some examples of cooperative learning strategies JIGSAW Divide students into 5- or 6-person jigsaw groups. The groups should be diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, and ability. Divide the day's lesson into 5-6 segments. Assign each student to learn one segment, making sure students have direct access only to their own segment. Give students time to read over their segment at least twice and become familiar with it. There is no need for them to memorize it.

 Form temporary "expert groups" by having one student from each jigsaw group join other students assigned to the same segment. Give students in these expert groups time to discuss the main points of their segment and to rehearse the presentations they will make to their jigsaw group. Bring the students back into their jigsaw groups. Ask each student to present her or his segment to the group. Encourage others in the group to ask questions for clarification. Float from group to group, observing the process. If any group is having trouble (e.g., a member is dominating or disruptive), make an appropriate intervention. Eventually, it's best for the group leader to handle this task. Leaders can be trained by whispering an instruction on how to intervene, until the leader gets the hang of it. At the end of the session, give a quiz on the material so that students quickly come to realize that these sessions are not just fun and games but really count.

Think-Pair-Share Involves a three step cooperative structure. During the first step individuals think silently about a question posed by the instructor. Individuals pair up during the second step and exchange thoughts. In the third step, the pairs share their responses with other pairs, other teams, or the entire group.

 Objective: to get students to recall, summarize or brainstorm Directions: State the problem, topic or issue Distribute one sheet of paper to each group Give a time limit and ask students to begin to write

Round Table
Each person at your table should write one thing he/she has learned about cooperative learning.

 Primary science school teachers can motivate students to learn new words and definitions in science using the Word Splash vocabulary strategy. Word Splash is a teaching strategy that makes vocabulary acquisition easier for elementary school students. Before beginning a new unit of study, a teacher will determine the most important vocabulary words for the topic. These words are then splashed, or displayed, in the classroom at the start of the unit.

 When the students enter the classroom and see the new words, their interest is peaked and they are motivated to learn what they mean and why they are there. The teacher then invites them to try and read the words and guess what they mean. These predictions help their brains to organize and assimilate the new vocabulary. As the students read and learn about the content area topic, they add pictures to the vocabulary words that represent their definitions. Students can also create their own word splashes on the front of their folders or notebooks with definitions and illustrations of the vocabulary terms. The word splash can then be used as a study aid to help students interact with and recall the words.

Word_splash.doc

Round robin Class is divided into small groups (4 to 6) with one person appointed as the recorder. A question is posed with many answers and students are given time to think about answers. After the "think time," members of the team share responses with one another round robin style. The recorder writes down the answers of the group members. The person next to the recorder starts and each person in the group in order gives an answer until time is called.

3-step interview Each member of a team chooses another member to be a partner. During the first step individuals interview their partners by asking clarifying questions. During the second step partners reverse the roles. For the final step, members share their partner's response with the team.

KWL (Know - Want to Know Learned)

K-W-L is an introductory strategy that provides a structure for recalling what students know about a topic, noting what students want to know, and finally listing what has been learned and is yet to be learned.
What is its purpose? The K-W-L strategy allows students to take inventory of what they already know and what they want to know. Students can categorize information about the topic that they expect to use.

How can I do it? On the chalkboard, on an overhead, on a handout, or on students' individual clean sheets, three columns should be drawn. Label Column 1 K, Column 2 W, Column 3 L. Before reading, students fill in the Know column with everything they already know about the topic. This helps generate their background knowledge. Then have students predict what they might learn about the topic, which might follow a quick glance at the topic headings, pictures, and charts that are found in the reading. This helps set their purpose for reading and focuses their attention on key ideas.

 Alternatively, you might have students put in the middle column what they want to learn about the topic. After reading, students should fill in their new knowledge gained from reading the content. They can also clear up misperceptions about the topic which might have shown up in the Know column before they actually read anything. This is the stage of metacognition: did they get it or not?

KWL chart sample.doc

Advance organizer and concept mapping

 Properties of materials:
Types of materials Uses of materials Natural materials Hardest materials

Some concept map computer tools http://users.edte.utwente.nl/lanzing/cm_home.htm

 Concept mapping is a technique for representing knowledge in graphs. Knowledge graphs are networks of concepts. Networks consist of nodes (points/vertices) and links (arcs/edges). Nodes represent concepts and links represent the relations between concepts. Concepts and sometimes links are labeled. Links can be non-, uni- or bi-directional. Concepts and links may be categorised, they can be simply associative, specified or divided in categories such as causal or temporal relations.

 Concept mapping can be done for for several purposes:

to generate ideas (brain storming, etc.); to design a complex structure (long texts, hypermedia, large web sites, etc.); to communicate complex ideas; to aid learning by explicitly integrating new and old knowledge; to assess understanding or diagnose misunderstanding.

Example: concept maps in science.pdf

http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/ free concept map tool

SUMMARY Why use Cooperative Learning? Research has shown that cooperative learning techniques: promote student learning and academic achievement increase student retention enhance student satisfaction with their learning experience help students develop skills in oral communication develop students' social skills promote student self-esteem help to promote positive race relations

TUTORIAL 1
Students are to work in groups Tutor assigns each group a topic in the primary science syllabus Each group is to discuss how they would incorporate a suitable cooperative learning activity during teaching of that lesson Each group is to present their findings to the others in the tutorial group Others are to critique and provide feedback Tutor is to provide summarizing comments

TUTORIAL 2 Choose a topic in the natural, biological and earth sciences Work in groups Each group is to select one topic in different domains and discuss among themselves how they would go about drawing a concept map for the topic by reference to a textbook Each group is to present their findings to the others in the tutorial group