Cooperative learning

                

                So yesterday we worked about cooperative learning, my classmates had to teach me about it. I think the experience of being on the other side, this is to say, being the ‘’pupil’’ is also interesting because when your classmates try to teach you something, is easier to understand the information.

                First of all, cooperative learning is about organising the class in heterogeneous groups, in these groups the pupils will work with each other, also they will go deeper than working individually. Cooperative learning has to be seen as another resource of education, its aim is to get not only the knowledge but to get the personal and social integration, affective support and higher work efficiency. These are some characteristics about cooperative learning:

•  It’s not competitive.
•  Cooperative learning has been created for everybody.
• You learn to work individually and in groups.
• It tries to develop skills such as: empathy, active listening, to dialogue, sharing information.

There are three kind of cooperative learning groups.

• Informal groups: this groups are ‘’short-term’’ groups, I mean, these groups are used to momentary issues. For example, you have shown your students a video and you want them to comment it in groups.
•  Formal groups: these are for a specific task which can last some sessions. For example, you make groups and you asked them to work about mammals, so then they have to expose their teamwork to the class.
•  Base groups: This kind of group is long-term; they can last until the graduation. In these groups, the students help each other with their difficulties. This group has to be monitored by the teacher.

            In cooperative learning the students has some ''roles'' in the groups, all of them has to experienced each role, here you have an example of roles:

But these groups have also some rules:

1. Everybody has to participate.
2. Everybody is equal.
3. Communication abilities have to be taught directly: such as having arguments, knowing how to put into words what you want to say...
4. There are going to be conflicts but we have to get to the solution together.
5.  Each member is going to be evaluated by the teacher and their other members; also the group is going to be evaluated.

We are going to finish with the differences of the traditional school and the one that we aim to: