Cooperative learning strategies can be used in any subject area or grade level. With the right amount of planning, students of all ages and abilities benefit from the use of cooperative learning. Some of the benefits of utilizing cooperative learning strategy include the following:
When students use the cooperative learning strategy, they build problem-solving and communication skills. Supported pairs or groups can properly communicate their ideas and elaborate on what their peers are saying. As educators, we are responsible for helping the students work together to solve problems or develop an answer to posed questions.
Individual accountability is another great benefit to using cooperative learning. When we incorporate cooperative learning strategies, students are responsible for generating their own ideas, contributing to the group and listening to be prepared to share information. Students can see immediately how they play an important role in their group. Students are empowered to share their ideas in a collaborative manner to move their group forward and progress.
Cooperation in learning can be scaled to become simpler for younger students and more rigorous for older students. An easy way to increase accountability during any strategy would be to ask students to respond to their partner.
For example, if implementing Quiz-Quiz-Trade, after a student shares their prompt and answer, their partner can respond using a sentence stem such as “I heard you say…” or “I agree/disagree with you because…” These sentence stems and responses can be worked into any strategy to ensure that students are listening to their partners and thinking about what is being shared.
Keep in mind, when you implement cooperative learning strategies in your classroom, you are teaching the whole child. With this, students develop interpersonal skills such as problem solving and effective communication. They are also given the time to develop, analyze and think critically about content. Ultimately, they are more engaged in the learning, allowing for memorable classroom experiences.
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Approved by the Program Director for the College of Education on Sept. 15, 2022.