We’re All In This Together
Setting the Emotional
Conditions For Learning
Collaboration
& Cooperative
Learning
Session Goals
• Understand the significance of the Stages of
Group Development
• Experience methods for developing groups
and group norms
• Identify strategies and content related to the
Learning Principle
It’s not easy
To be wise
Alone.
Ishi, The Last Yahi Indian
Stages in Group
Development
• Creating a Sense of Inclusion
• Having a Say
• Collaborative Action
Developing a Sense of Belonging:
Students and Adults…
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Know each other’s names
Participate as a member of a Learning Club
Practice active listening
Feel free to speak up in class
Refrain from put downs
Willing to work with new study partners
Welcome and immediately include new students and
visitors
• Know and appreciate strengths of classmates
• *Be certain to continually feed the emotional tone of the
classroom by doing Sense of Belonging Activities routinely
Creating Common Ground: Students
and Adults…
• Create and maintain conditions that make it safe
to disagree
• Understand that it’s okay to hold differing
opinions
• Realize it’s equally okay to change one’s mind
without it being considered a sign of weakness or
losing face
• Learn to solve problems and make decisions
together
• Know that their ideas and opinions are valued
Taking Action: Students and Adults…
• Strengthen the sense of belonging by working
together to accomplish an agreed-upon task
• Give students practice in applying personal and
social skills needed to create and maintain
common ground
• Provide practice in using concepts and skills of
our curriculum in real-world situations
• Give students practice in using the levers of our
democratic society to affect change for the
common good
GROUP ROLES
Reporter/Talker - Red
Recorder/Writer or Drawer - Blue
Liaison/Materials or Things - Yellow
Facilitator/Helper - Green
**Use pictures instead of words for
Primary
GROUP ROLES
General group roles include the following:
Recorder/Reporter/Facilitator/
Liaison-Materials Person
I.
In job alike groups, define your roles
II.
Report back to Learning Club and
share out your responsibilities
III. Be prepared to perform your duties
Group Roles
• Use a dictionary to define their job, each
student recording the information on a 3x5
card
• Brainstorm a list of responsibilities associated
with the job/role
• Identify and write a use statement for each of
three LIFESKILLS or Lifelong Guidelines
attached to the job
In your learning clubs:
1. Each individual shares their quote
and what it means to them
2. Describe something you are
looking forward to today
3. Create an alliterative group name
for your table using one of the
LIFESKILLS (Be prepared to share
out) Select an applause to go
along with your name
Organizing Groups
• On a 3x5 card:
– Write the names of three people with whom you
would like to be in a group.
– Guarantee: You’ll be with one person you select
• Teacher works to make compatible groups
using the cards.
• If there is a student who no-one selects, you
allow for more than one selected person to be
in that group and make a special arrangement.
Agreements
• In newly formed groups have students create
agreements by making “Look, Sound, Feel” charts
for each of the Lifelong Guidelines:
• Have students write up how they will ensure that
each person has a say in group discussions and
decisions.
• All group members sign each of the documents.
T-Chart for ____________
(Lifelong Guideline)
Looks Like…
Sounds Like…
Feels Like…
EE p. 8.21
T-Chart for ____________
(Lifelong Guideline)
Doesn’t
Looks Like…
Doesn’t Sound
Like…
Doesn’t Feel
Like…
EE p. 8.21
Connection: Emotion & Movement
• Students analyze historical or current events
and literature for examples of collaboration
and non-collaboration.
• Provide opportunity for students to give
appreciations to one another in groups and in
the whole class community (appreciation box)
• Focus on use of LLG and LS
• Utilize Town Hall Meetings to solve problems,
celebrate and acknowledge
Humans are born into this world “hardwired”
with specific fundamental behaviors:
•
•
•
•
To connect/attach with their surroundings
To receive and give care
To engage in their environment
To seek patterns/meaning within
their
environment
• To respond in organized,
effective/competent
ways
• To be “ultimately concerned”
© Dr. Sigurd Zielke 2005
Susan Kovalik & Associates
Connection: Multiple Intelligences
• Ensure that project and group-work assignments
include a number of intelligence needs
• Ensure a balance of inquiries based on the
multiple intelligences so students naturally seek
out others for assistance.
• Organize groups by a MI criteria, making certain
that at least four intelligences represented.
• Have students analyze the intelligences they will
need to use in order to complete tasks.
• Attach intelligence strengths to group roles.
Connections: Patterns and Programs
• Have students participate in shared reflections
and analysis of what they’ve learned.
• Help students recognize the mental programs
and patterns inherent in effective group work.
• Be purposeful in designing groupwork so it
doesn’t become simply sharing the same
assignment.
• Students should be learning how to
understand the world and one another.
Connection to Learning Principles:
Experience
• Tasks should reflect real life expectations
where one person alone could not complete
the task successfully.
• Social skills are always a part of the equation.
• Vary leadership expectations
• Form new groups for skill work, project work,
and planning (students will soon become
accustomed to working with all members of
the class community.
Never doubt that a small group of committed
individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is
the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
• "Today we are faced with the
preeminent fact that, if civilization is to
survive,
we must cultivate the science of
human relationships... the ability of all
peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the
same world, at peace.“
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Resources
• Designing Groupwork by Elizabeth Cohen
• Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom by
Elizabeth Cohen
• Cooperative Learning for All Grades by Spencer
Kagan
• TRIBES Learning Communities by Jeanne Gibbs