Cooperative Learning

 Hello everyone, 

I hope you are all safe and sound!!!

Recently i read one article about cooperative learning which left me speechless. Personally i believe that cooperative learning is something very important nowadays and a great technique to apply in your curriculum. Especially in elementary classrooms because it helps students become actively engaged in their learning process and improve their understanding at the content. But what actually do we mean by "cooperative learning"?, is an instructional strategy that enables small groups of students to work together on a common assignment. The key of success is to differentiate cooperative learning than simply dividing students into small groups. Positive Interdependence.  From the moment that they will start to divide the exercises about the mutual assignment then they will be able to understand that they count on each other. If someone of them becomes lazy then everyone on the group will "sink" but if everyone do their job on time they will succeed. Another important point is that" students work together, but perform alone" and this is called Individual Accountability. Which means that they can really work together but at the end they will be graded individually. The classmates that are part of a group must be able to understand that they are successful as a whole but also that they are successful as individuals. Face-to-Face interaction is as well very essential. This means that students need to practice orally the nature of the concepts being learned, oral explanations of how to solve problems etc.In cooperative groups students learn academic subjects taskwork, and also interpersonal and small group skills such as teamwork. Such a group must me able to provide effective leadership, trust building, decision making, conflict management and communication as well.

When students will develop these kind of skills they will be able to run on future projects smoothly and fast. And this is called Interpersonal and Small Group Social Skills. The last but not less important element is group processing. This means that after we have completed our work we need some time in order to reflect on what we have done right and what not. It will help students to be better and to improve next time they have a group work. Personally i believe that cooperative work is something very good. It will help students to broaden their horizons, and to understand the main point which is working on small groups, working together as a whole, as a team. They need to be cooperative not only at school but during their whole life even when they start working, or when they are eating all together on a business table etc. Maybe they will not understand the importance when they will be on elementary school but they will thank them (the teachers using this method) later.  And this is the reason why i am going to practice that method as a future teacher one day.

Hope you enjoyed reading this post! Feel free to leave your comments down below!!!