Best Practice Classroom Activities for Improving Students’ Cooperative Skills

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Cooperative learning comprises of academic and social learning experiences within the classroom, where students are taught to complete tasks as a collective group towards a common goal. Cooperative learning is said to promote positive interpersonal relations, produce motivation to learn and enhance self-esteem (Creighton & Szymkowiak, 2014). They support positive social outcomes including positive inter-group relations and the ability to work collaboratively with others as a team (Horner, Carr, Strain, Todd & Reed, 2002).Maintaining social competence allows students to achieve a balance between meeting their own needs while maintaining positive relations with others. Learning cooperative behaviors enables students to negotiate with others, have creative problem solving strategies and value each person within the group (Creighton & Szymkowiak, 2014).
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1. Individual accountability to maintain student responsibility and appropriate behavior
2. Engagement and outcomes
3. Positive interdependence relating to each group member learning to depend on the rest of the group while working with others to complete the task
4. Positive face to face interactions involved with listening, encouraging shared decision making, personal responsibilities and teaching how to give and receive feedback
5. Group processing to allow time for the team to discuss how well the group achieved their goal and maintained an effective working relationship

​When teaching academic and/or behavior expectations, teachers can use the platform of cooperative learning strategies. This can be used as a class wide intervention or strategy used on students ISP’s or ISP-B’s. A large portion of behavior difficulties are a result of lagging skills. The website below targets cooperative learning activities to support growth in lagging skills.
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The Peace First Digital Activity Center is a great resource that allows teachers to generate cooperative games paired with skill building, and download complete PDFs of rules, purpose, skills, materials, directions and debrief for each activity.

Choices can be filtered by:

• Skill: Communication, conflict resolution, cooperation and empathy.
• Grade: Early Elementary, Upper Elementary, Middle/High School.
• Theme: Civic engagement, compassion, courage, feelings, friendship, inclusion/exclusion, taking a stand.

Below are effective strategies that can conveniently teach important behavioral lessons without taking time away from academic instruction.

Think-Pair-Share
Also called turn & talk. Teacher poses a question to the group, and each student has a minute or two to think about the question. Then, they turn and discuss with someone sitting next to them, and then share with the whole class (Teed, McDarvis, Roseth, n.d.).

This is a useful cooperative learning strategy because it engages all students in their learning and it can be done quickly during almost any lesson.

Jigsaw
Students are placed into “home groups” and “expert groups” and are each assigned a different topic within the same general topic. Students work on researching their topics with others who have the same topic (their expert group) and then return back to their home group to teach them about their topic. Together, all the pieces come together to form a complete product (Reading Rockets, 2015).

This is useful in that it helps to get students engage with one another and hold them accountable for their learning. It is truly cooperative in that every student needs to put work in so that all group members become informed on the topics. This can be used across content areas and with a variety of topics, allowing students to become the teachers.

Numbered Heads Together
Students are placed into groups and given a number in their group. Students are asked a question and discuss it with their group members. When time is up, the teacher calls a number and all students with that number stand up and take turns sharing what they discussed in their groups. The students are able to build on and connect similar ideas among the groups and broaden the conversation. (Colorado, 2015).

This strategy is useful because it allows students to discuss in small groups before going into a whole class discussion. Additionally, it makes it so all students have to contribute and listen to the conversation, so they have something to share if their number gets called. It helps to get each student engaged and involved in their learning.

Tea Party
Students form two circles facing each other (one inner circle and one outer circle). The students are given a question and they are to discuss the the question with the student they are facing. The students on the outer circle moves in one direction, so they have a new partner to discuss with. Another question is asked, and more discussion is created with a new partner (Colorado, 2015).

This strategy is useful because not only does it allow for all students to get a chance and share with another student, but additionally, it allows for students to work together to come up with a solution. If a student isn’t talking, sharing, or discussing, then they are losing valuable learning time. It is important for the teacher to be circulating to ensure that engaging conversations are occurring, and prompting those who need extra support.

Round Robin
Students are sitting with groups (3-4 students), and they teacher asks them a question or gives them a problem to solve. The questions or problems are deliberating chosen, in that there are multiple ways to solve the problem and multiple points for discussion. Students in their groups take turns answer and sharing their ideas with each other, working together to come up with an answer that they all agree on (Colorado, 2015).

This strategy is important because it gives students the opportunity to work together to solve a goal or come to a joint understanding. It requires the participation of each student in the group, and ensures that students are sharing their ideas. During this activity, students work on taking turns, supporting one another, and sharing their ideas.

Write Around
Students are placed in groups with 3-4 students and the teacher gives each group a topic or idea. Once again, it is important for the topic/idea to have multiple answers or understandings. Students take turns writing their response to the question or idea on a piece of paper, shared by the group. After a certain amount of time, the teacher tells the students to pass the paper to the next group member, who then takes the time to read over what the other group member wrote and add to it, explain it further, or clarify what was written. The process repeats throughout the group (Colorado, 2015).

This strategy is useful in that it allows for all students to demonstrate their contribution and knowledge surrounding an area or a topic. It necessitates that students are paying attention to what their group members are writing, and helping one another by adding on or clarifying their ideas. This helps to ensure that each student is learning and contributing to the group’s ideas to come to a complete understanding.

Carousel
In this activity, students are broken into groups of 3-4 and the teacher places chart paper around the room with different questions on them, related to a certain topic. This lesson can be done before starting a new unit to activate prior knowledge, during the unit, or at the end of review. Each group starts at a different poster and is given a different color marker to write with. The marker travels with the groups around the rooms, and each group has 1-2 minutes to answer the question on the chart paper. They then rotate around the room to the next poster and repeat the process. You may want to try to get each group member to write their ideas down on the paper so that each student’s ideas are evident on the paper. When every group has written on each piece of paper, the class comes together for a whole class discussion and shares what is written on the posters (Gray, 2016).
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This strategy is useful because it causes students to work together in their groups but also within the whole class. Students have to ensure they are reading what other students wrote and coming up with new ideas, rather than copying what is already there. It helps to hold all students accountable because they have to write their ideas down, and help their group members who are struggling to come up with something to write down.