3A - Cooperative Learning

There are many ways I can use grouping patterns to teach writing standards to my first graders. Here is an example of a lesson I did that addresses the Common Core ELA-LITERACY.W.1.1 Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.  The topic was, “Do you think our school is a safe place?”   

I would start this lesson by reading aloud Arthur’s Fire Drill by Marc Brown whole group.  We will discuss the purpose of fire drills in school. I will guide the students to think about what makes a school safe and what makes a school unsafe for children. I will ask the students to share their ideas with their elbow partner and then I will call on students to share it with the class as I write the ideas down on the whiteboard This is an example of heterogenous and partner groupings. 

After our brainstorm, I will ask the question “Do you think our school is safe for children?”  I will call on random students to share their opinion. I will then group students together by what their opinion is heterogeneously.  If they feel that our school is safe, then I will group them together in groups of 3-4. If they feel that our school is unsafe, then I will group those students together in groups of 3-4.  We will all go walk around the entire school campus so that the students can make observations on anything they view as safe or unsafe around our school.  They will work together in their groups to observe, discuss and make notes on their group paper.

When we come back into our class, I will homogeneously group students in partners by ability.  This is for me to be able to challenge my advanced writers to write more in depth with more detailed reasons that support their opinion and also for me to be able to assist my struggling writers. This would allow me to modify the objective for each partnership as I would allow my lower achieving students to write simple supporting sentences.  I will ask the peer partnerships to share with each other their findings from walking around the campus. They will then write a 5 sentence opinion piece using the “hamburger” graphic organizer beginning with a topic sentence which states their opinion, 3 reasons and a conclusion.  

Each grouping pattern will facilitate meeting the content area standard because each grouping pattern encourages thinking, creativity, listening to different perspectives, etc.  The various groups the children work in will help to scaffold the objective so that all learners can be successful in writing an opinion piece about the topic.

Cooperative learning is great for differentiation because children are more active in this type of activity which creates a high motivation for the learner. Many students do not enjoy or respond well to being passive learners. This allows them to interact with other students and enjoy the process of learning.  If students are engaged in the learning activity then the obvious result would be higher student performance.  Cooperative learning also allows the teacher to homogeneously group the students which allows her to work with the advanced groups together and the struggling groups together. This is helpful because the teacher can focus on the needed skills for each group.