Blog #7: Cooperative-learning, student-centered strategies, continued (due Monday, 3/26/12 by 8 AM)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stephanie Knouse on March 31, 2012 at 7:08am

Sounds like a technique that you'll be able to use in the future!

Permalink Reply by Ben Campbell on March 24, 2012 at 1:28pm

So I did the group grid activity found on this website http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/techniques.html and basically it was a more student-centered cooperative-learning graphic organizer.  Here is what I did and how it unfolded in my lesson:

Friday the 16th was the day after their last unit test so what they usually do is watch a spanish tv show.  This show only takes up about 35 minutes of class so I had a few minutes with them.  So what I did to start this activity was allow the students to tell me what words they were interested in knowing.  I gave them the theme (the environment) and I had each student write down at least 3 words that they wanted to know that dealt with the environment.  I did this because I wanted them have some sort of say in what they were learning instead of just throwing borrowing vocab from the book that they weren't interested in.

Monday the 19th was the day that I gave them their vocab lists.  Over the weekend I compiled the words they came up with and the words from the textbook and created their vocab list.  So during class I presented them with their new set of vocabulary but I intentionally put the order of the words alphabetically so they wouldn't be in any categorical order.  I did this because I wanted them to come up with their own classification themes for the words they saw.  So during class that day for about 15 minutes I put them in their groups and had them go through the vocab list and look at each word and come up with at least 4 categories that they could sort their words in.  I didn't give them specific categories because I wanted them to come up with them on their own and I wanted them to come up with a way of associating the words with something that they came up with instead of me.

Tuesday the 20th and Wednesday the 21st the students took the categories they came up with and expanded it into a graphic organizer.  As a group they created a graphic organizer with their own categories and drawings to represent each category and we did them on large pieces of construction paper so we could hang them in the hall.  We also made it into a competition between the classes so this added a little motivation for the students.  Once they were finished the students presented them in Spanish to the class and then the other spanish teachers voted on the winners.

The idea behind the activity was for the students to come up with their own working knowledge and their own way of remembering the vocabulary words while working together in groups.  The cool part was I didn't really have to do much other than to hand out markers and help them spell out words.  They did everything on their own and I was looking for this sort of student-centered classroom.  I thought the activity worked very well and my students definitely loved it.  They all told me they thought it was much more exciting then just having to open up the dictionary to look up definitions. I definitely believe it was an effective strategy that facilitated L2 acquisition.  The goal was for them to come up with ways to remember the vocabulary words other than just straight memorization and this allowed them to categorize words and draw them out on a big piece of paper.  All my students said that they felt like they had a better idea of what the words meant just by remembering what category they put the word in.

Permalink Reply by Ben Campbell on March 24, 2012 at 1:29pm

So apparently there is a limit to how many words i can write....here is the last paragraph

One thing I would do differently next time, would be to encourage more usage of Spanish.  When coming up with categories and when drawing out the graphic organizers a lot of it was done in English.  However, all of them at some point took the opportunity to try to speak in Spanish.  One other thing I would do differently is try and eliminate the last day we spent on the graphic organizer.  I think we may have spent a little too much time on the activity.  I'd rather have the activity done in less than three days but I believe it was truly helpful and my students loved it.

Permalink Reply by Ben Campbell on March 24, 2012 at 1:29pm

ps i recommend the activity but you may need to motivate them with some sort of competion

Permalink Reply by Stephanie Knouse on March 31, 2012 at 7:08am

The students were really engaged; I enjoyed seeing this in action!

Permalink Reply by Stephanie Knouse on March 31, 2012 at 7:10am

Good reflection on this technique. Not always what we think will be a 'hit' turns out to be. However, it sounds like you have some specifics in mind to make it a more effective activity in the future. 

Permalink Reply by Richard Barrett on April 1, 2012 at 6:28pm

The activity that I implemented was a modified jigsaw reading activity.  Since the students already sit in group of 3-4, I took a Mayan legend and divided it giving a small paragraph/section to each group for them to read on their own/with some guidance.  The students then summarized their sections to the class.  When everyone was done, I had them do a reading comprehension activity in which they summarized the whole story in order to demonstrate their understanding.

In terms of successfulness in creating a student-centered classroom, I think the activity was moderately successful.  The students were doing a lot of the work on their own, but they still had to rely on me a lot to help scaffold their comprehension.

In terms of facilitating L2 acquisition, I think the activity was highly appropriate; the students were exposed to an authentic text in Spanish so they were able to experience for themselves how the language is/was used by native speakers of Spanish.

If I were to do this activity another time, I would try to allow the students to work out comprehension on their own.  In other words in order to make it much more student centered, I wouldn't give them as much assistance as I did this time.

When doing reading comprehension activities such as this one, I would recommend that you work doggedly to make sure the students are on task the whole time and paying attention when they need to be.  If you don't do this, you WILL end up getting frustrated at the students when it seems that they didn't understand the story.

Permalink Reply by Jessica Richardson on April 12, 2012 at 8:45pm

Ooops! I just realized that these were two seperate posts! I glanced at the title without looking at the number, so here is my post very late.

1. I did a jigsaw activity with my class, and I have actually used it several times with my students thus far. The activity was a guided question activity that had them study different aspects of demonstrative adjectives and pronouns. I guided them on how to divide themselves for the individual portion, in their expert groups, and as a group of learners.

2. I think it went really well because the students were having to work through the information themselves and not just have me explain it. Also teaching it meant they had to understand the topic really well. I walked around and guided some students that were stuck, but I think it definitely raised their level of confidence.

3. I seemed effective. Students took the notes and explained it to each other in ways they could understand. I think that, combined with the later whole class discussion, made them feel like capable learners that can understand the patterns of grammar.

4. I would give them more materials for their searching and make sure that each member only has access to the information to answer his or her question. That way students would have to completely rely on each other. Also I would have a quick quiz or something afterwards to show that learning from each other is both important and effective.

5. Make sure to have some sort of guiding questions for each member within a group. Telling them to learn about a specific topic is not enough; they need some structure to it. Also, this is a good time to use a timer because kids will take forever to discuss it or they will wait too long to begin seriously studying the material.