Week 8: Cooperative Learning

EFFECTIVE TEACHING PRACTICES

The lesson on cooperative learning is the second lesson about managing classrooms through effective teaching practices. If our classes are well designing and thoughtfully prepared, our students will be engaged enough in class to make management easier for us.

THE ELEMENTS

Not all group work is cooperative learning. For a group activity to truly be a cooperative learning activity, there are five necessary elements that must be present. We learned about these in class by using a jigsaw structure! I was very impressed by the artwork that you all designed to express the meanings of these elements. Just for a review, here are the five elements of cooperative learning:

Positive Interdependence: 

Everybody works together and supports each other. In order for one of us to succeed, we must all succeed.

Individual Accountability:

Each person in the group has a responsibility. It shouldn’t be possible for one students to “coast” through the project or activity.

Face to Face Interaction:

Students work together and discuss in real time. 

Social Skills:

Students develop important interpersonal skills such as cooperation, negotiation, sharing and teamwork, among others.

Group Processing: 

While working and after the job is done, participants reflect on

their group work.


I couldn't find the file for the in-class materials on my computer, so here are some older materials that may even be more useful outside of class.

And just for fun...

Next Week's Agenda:  Positive Reinforcement

Week 7: Chuseok!!!

Once every five or six years, the Chuseok holiday gives Korea the gift of a whole week off of work or school.  In a gesture to recognize this special year of the holiday, YL-TESOL has decided to move all classes into the following week. This means that there will be no classes held for the week of Chuseok.  Have a nice time with your families and come back next refreshed and ready to finish off the second half of the semester!

Week 6: Learning Centers

A wild week

I understand that this week has been pretty hectic for all the YL-TESOL trainees.  That makes this a perfect week for a little treat in Management class!  

The lesson on learning centers is the first in our unit on managing the classroom through effective teaching practices.  It involves setting up self contained stations that students can use for educational activities.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because all of your instructors use this technique from time to time.

How it can be done

Throughout the semester you may see some different examples of a learning centers approach.  In Literacy class, you may have a room full of resources.  In Management class, we had a cart full of activities.  What they both had in common was that they were thematic.  Whenever you use learning centers in your classroom, it’s a good idea that the centers are somehow related in some way.  Our centers in Management were related to a book.  The Literacy centers were related to phonics. 

Another thing that we did in Management was relate them to multiple intelligences.  The theory of multiple intelligences is something that everyone will get a deeper understanding of later in the semester, but this week we all got a short introduction.  One of the main ideas to remember is that the intelligences are all related, so we don’t need to make a learning center for each intelligence.  One center can target as many as four or five intelligences!

Finally, remember that children like having fun while they are learning and they like the feeling that they have choices about how they learn.  Incorporate that into your lessons and your students will be so engaged with their lessons, that managing your classroom will be a  breeze! 

Here are the instructions from the centers that you all experienced this week!

Your Homework

   Although there is an assignment on your syllabus, I've decided to cancel this assignment in order to help you enjoy your Chuseok more!  Have a nice holiday!

For after the holiday: Cooperative Learning

Week 5: Routines and Helpers

Making Expectations Clear

The lesson on routines always seems like such a simple concept, but I believe it is based on one of the key concepts of having a well-managed classroom: if students know what behavior you expect of them, they will behave in that way.

Routines can come in the form of a special hand signal, a magic word, a bell(like in my classes), or a poster on the wall, among other things.  Any way that you use them, the are an important part of every teachers toolbox for keeping problematic behaviors down and saving time.

Making it clear

15 years ago, I got a speeding ticket while I was driving to a ski resort in Idaho.  Why was I speeding?  Is it because I’m a rebel and I hate the rules? No.  Is it because I wanted to make the police angry? No again.  Is it because I have “the need for speed” and I love moving fast? Maybe, but not this time.  I was actually speeding because I didn’t see any speed limit signs and I felt like I was going the right speed for the road.  Everyone has had a similar experience where they were doing the wrong thing simply because they didn’t know the way they were expected to do it.

This concept also applies to our classrooms.  For the same reason that rules make general expectations clear, sometimes we need to help our students with specific things in our classrooms.  Routine posters like the one pictured can tell students exactly how we expect them to do certain things.  As we discussed and practiced in class, these poster have 5 or fewer steps with pictures to add context.  They are also written in 100% positive language.

“Autopilot”

So now we just have to make posters, put them on the wall and students will all behave like little angels, right? Well, not exactly. If we want our students to follow routines, we have to practice.  Make it a game!  If they don’t follow a routine very well one time, tell them to go back to what they were doing and try again.  If you can, use a stopwatch and see if you can make their times better as they practice.

Part of this week’s homework is to make a routine poster for your classroom. If possible, make one that you could actually use someday.  Here are some good ideas for posters:

• What to do when you finish early
• Getting ready for lunch
• Show and Tell
• Ending the day
• Handing in homework
• Using the library

Encouraging Responsibility and Community

The next part of our lesson this week was about classroom helpers.  This is another idea that usually needs to be adapted differently to different groups of students.  When teachers give jobs to students, depending on their age and how much time they spend with them, they can give everyone jobs or just have one student job that students take turns doing.  

Any way that it’s done, when I’ve seen teachers use this idea it builds and large amount of community in the classroom.  In addition, it also makes students feel closer to the teacher when they feel that they are really helping him or her out, resulting in a stronger personal influence with students.  And of course, it’s also really great to have someone to help you out with some of the small tasks around the classroom.

In addition to your routine poster, you will also need to create one helper badge for sharing time next week.  You can make them by hand or on a computer, but remember to make them YL-friendly and put the expectations for the job on the back of the badge.  If I see a couple that I like, we might use them in our classes at YL-TESOL!

Next week's agenda:  Learning Centers

Week 4: Classroom Rules

In this week's lesson, we had a great time learning about rules, why we have rules, and how we should make them.  Rules are important in the young learner classroom because like routines, they give clear expectations for behavior.  Rules also help us establish a classroom culture for children that is separate from their home culture.  It is also helpful for students to become accustomed to following rules in preparation for living with the rules of society. 

   I also hope that everyone had a good time making rules as a class.  With the method that we used in class, students work together and make rules for themselves.  If students make the rules, they develop a sense of ownership and closeness to the rules as well as a better understanding of the meanings of their rules and why each rule is necessary.  When students feel that they own the rules, they are more likely to follow them.  In addition, making rules together is an effective way to build classroom community. It also prepares students to be active participants in a democratic society.

For your homework this week, everyone needs to think of a community-building way to make a rules poster.  Just take the idea of classroom community and think of how you could make a poster together with the young learners that you teach or see yourself teaching later.  In our class this week, we used handprints to give everyone a chance to put their mark on the poster.  How would you do it with your students?  Draw it up on an A4 size piece of paper and share it next week! Be sure to write up a short description of how your poster includes students in the rule making process and builds community in your classroom.

Next week:  Routines and Helpers

Week 3: The Learning Environment

Good class displays can be used to meet instructional needs and build classroom community

In the beginning of our proactive management module, it’s important for us to consider the overall environment that we prepare for our children.  This week we looked at what we need to consider to make our students comfortable in their classrooms.  For the next two weeks, we will be looking at other things that we can use to fill our classrooms and manage our students proactively.

For the second half of this week’s class, we took a look at the four major considerations teachers need to think about when they are putting a classroom together.  Everyone did an excellent job brainstorming in their groups about what are the building blocks of an effective learning environment.  One thing I always love about this activity is that there are always new ideas that I have never heard before.

A "quiet space" is great for when kids need 

to manage emotions.

 The concepts that we talked about in class may not fit everyone’s teaching situation the same.  So, for homework this week everyone needs to bring their own version of a classroom to share with friends.  Think about your individual teaching situation.  Do you have a classroom of your own?  Do you share with several teachers?  If you could have all the money in the world to design your own classroom, how would you do it?  You can use the paper that was handed out in class to cut, paste and draw your classroom or draw it by hand or on a computer.  Just show me that you put some effort into it and be ready to explain your ideas to the class.  Do your best to think of some fun and original stuff! 

If you need them, here is the furniture sheet from class, a fancy classroom design tool and another more simple version for you to use.

Here's next week's agenda: Class Rules

Week 2: Helping Each Other Write and Listen

This week's management class lays an important foundation for both good teaching and good living.  Being supportive and listening makes everyone's life easier!  Here’s a bit of what we covered this week:

Peer Editing

This week everyone brought a rough draft of their first paper of the semester.  We went through the important steps of the peer review process: Compliments, suggestions and corrections.  I was very pleased to see that people were very eager to share their work with their friends and give and receive valuable feedback.

Peer editing is a valuable skill for all of us to learn and practice.  As post graduate students, all YL trainees should be trying to become more independent in developing their English writing skills.  In addition, peer editing is a useful skill that we can pass on to our students in the future!

Although not all of your professors provide time in class for peer editing, remember that it is a part of the writing process that you can use with all of your future assignments.  If possible, try meeting with classmates outside of class to take a look at each other’s papers.  Get lunch or a cup of coffee; it can be fun!  Keep your peer review checklist handy for when you get together and remember to follow the important steps.

Active Listening

The second half of this week’s class was like a quick workshop on active listening.  It was fun giving everyone a taste of the concept.  I’m glad that everyone now has a basic understanding of what active listening is.  This is not the last time you will hear about it this semester.  We will be revisiting it in future lessons.  Now that we all have a basic understanding of it, it will be easier to know what we are talking about when I refer to it later on.

Active listening is an important skill for us all to know when dealing with students and the parents of our students.  It’s also an important skill for us to pass on to our students so that they can grow into good and effective people.  The first two exercises that we did in class were methods that can be used for helping children understand and use active listening skills.

The first thing that we practiced was blind walking.  Through this activity, we learned that listening is important and that not all communication is verbal.  In active listening, we need to do our best to listen 100% and only use nonverbal communication to show that you are listening.

In the next activity, we practiced being “bad listeners”.   We were very mean to one of our classmates, but they each got a piece of candy when it was over.  What we learned from this activity was that being a bad listener can be hurtful to our friends, but can also deprive us of important information.  After that, we all got a little bit of practice with a partner.  

If anyone wants more information on active listening or wants more practice, feel free to come by my office and visit!

Next week's agenda: The Learning Environment