Course Description: This Course focuses on the basic principles of collaborative / cooperative learning and some strategies and structures for making it part of a teacher’s classroom practice. Collaborative learning allows teachers to effectively address and assess expectations from diverse curriculum areas in the local Curriculum (e.g. communication, cooperative teamwork, goal setting, problem solving, organization, interpersonal). It allows students to process their own learning and construct their own meaning from a lesson or task, strategies that generally lead to deeper understanding of concepts. Teachers will examine how to assess individual student achievement within a group context. In addition, students receive valuable skills for the world of work – achievement beyond school.
Learning Outcomes: In this course you will:
Understand why collaborative learning is a powerful strategy to adopt as part of your repertoire;
Learn the basic principles that make cooperative learning more effective than simple group work;
Learn five structures that have the basic principles already built in;
Try Think-Pair-Share, or an adaptation, in your own teaching situation;
Incorporate one of the other five structures into a lesson plan;
Reflect on how all five of these structures could be used in your teaching situation.
