Cooperative+Learning

**The 5 W's (and an H) of Cooperative Learning**

Cooperative learning is an effective teaching strategy used by educators in classrooms ranging from kindergarten to higher education. This strategy, however, usually allows students themselves to communicate and teach the specified topic to each other.
 * Who?**

Cooperation is working together to accomplish a common goal. Through cooperative learning, students are organized into small groups (usually of 2-5) to work though an assignment until they complete it and each individual understands the topic. Each students is usually assigned a special role that only he or she is responsible for. Therefore, achievement is dependent on both individual effort and team effort through members' contributions.
 * What?**

Cooperative learning takes place in classrooms across the world at every level, with its benefits obvious in schools, the workplace, and other locations in which small groups are used.
 * Where?**

Cooperative learning is generally used in classrooms upon introduction to a new topic, review of a topic, or when a more thorough explanation of a concept needs to be examined.
 * When?**

The traditional classroom focuses on individual work, creating a competitive environment. Myriad experimental studies have proven that cooperative learning leads to higher academic achievement; students score higher on tests because of advanced critical thinking an d reasoning skills. Cooperative learning also leads to an increased retention rate because students are more active in the learning process. Students in h eterogeneous groups (different race, gender, learning style) tend to understand and remember more than those is homogeneous groups.
 * Why?**

Building relationships is a valuable aspect of cooperative learning. By grouping students with different traits, educators are not only promoting positive race relations, but also the acceptance of others, and because these students are active in the learning process, they are more apt to making friends in the classroom.

Social skills are also highly developed through cooperative learning. Students learn to communicate more effectively by developing oral skills, discussing problems and solutions, and critiquing group work together. Their level of self-esteem is likely to rise.

Cooperative learning also allows educators the ability to conserve materials and assign more complex projects than can be done by individuals.

media type="youtube" key="TBl0PdJ33GM" height="385" width="480" align="center"  Cooperative learning techniques can be done in a multitude of ways, each of which prove invaluable to the learning process. The acronym P.I.G.S. describes perfectly how these techniques help: **I** ndividual accountability **G** roup processing **S** ocial skills
 * How?**
 * P** ositive interdependence
 * Each group member helps the others understand the topic at hand and depends on other members to complete the task.
 * Each group member is responsible for a distinct contribution.
 * No social loafing. Each member must portray responsibility for his/her specific task.
 * Teachers may ensure accountability by randomly calling on one member from each group or recording frequency of participation.
 * Group members must communicate the strength and weaknesses of the group as a whole.
 * Group members must discuss how well they're achieving their goals and how they're handling working relationships.
 * Face-to-face interaction aids oral communication as the students teach what they learn, discuss concepts more in depth, and connect past learning with the new concept.
 * Group members will inevitably work on leadership skills, decision making, trust-building, and conflict management.

((Continue to Cooperative Learning 2 for more on how to incorporate cooperative learning in the classroom & youtube videos.))