Kinder through grade twelve, these cooperative learning strategies are tried and true ways to get your students thinking out loud and listening in.
For many of us, cooperative learning became a best practice we had to let go of during the pandemic. All of a sudden, it wasn’t so easy to tell your students to “turn and talk” to their shoulder partner to process a concept or idea.
Just like SEL and Self Care became hot topics once we realized how badly they were needed, cooperative learning needs to make a comeback in a big way.
Who is wise? He who learns from everyone.
Ben Franklin
We need to hear different perspectives. We need to process things orally. We need to follow the trail of ideas to a bigger and more meaningful destination! Enter cooperative learning.
This year, I have had the unique opportunity to work in hundreds of classrooms from kinder all the way up to the big kids in their senior year. Unfortunately, many of these smart capable young people just sort of forgot how to have a conversation with someone else.
So, what makes a cooperative learning experience the ticket to a meaningful conversation? How do we uncover all the great ideas lurking beneath the surface in our students?
1. Break the Ice
First, start with an ice breaker. We’ve got to warm up to the idea of sharing our thinking, even with people we know and love. One of the very best ways to melt the ice is with a smile or a laugh. Give them something unexpected to think over, something low stakes. One of the best and fastest ways to do this is with a “would you rather” question.
Would you rather?
Would you rather questions that are a bit quirky send the message that it’s ok to think outside the box. It is even better to take a risk and get a little creative. Best of all, be a little bit weird.
When I ask students if they would rather have an elephant-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized elephants, the responses are genuinely original. Fourth graders are devising a business plan to grow and sell duck-sized elephants, while their classmates are discussing how practical it would be to ride an elephant-sized duck over land, air, and sea.
By having your students move to one side of the room or the other based on their choice, you have now included movement, which is another critical piece to the warm-up for cooperative learning and deeper academic conversations.
Another great way to break the ice and prep those brilliant minds for cooperative learning is to start with a brain break.
Time for a brain break
Brain Breaks are quickly becoming the norm in many elementary classrooms throughout the day. Not only because of all the research showing its benefits to giving kids a learning boost but because they just know it works.
“Pink Toe” is one of my favorite brain breaks because it’s quick and silly and appropriate for any fun-loving group. The person leading this brain break calls out a body part and a color. (I dare you to say the words body part in a fifth-grade classroom.)
Participants will then move quickly to touch the color with the body part called out. For example, if you say “Pink Toe,” everyone must move quickly to something pink, and touch it with their toe. I recommend keeping your shoes on, but do what tickles your fancy (or your toes.)
Now that everyone has smiled and warmed up a bit, let us move on to the cooperative part.
2. Which one does not belong.
This activity is awesome because there is no right answer. In a world where we place so much emphasis on being right, we forget how to have real problem-solving and inclusive conversations.
To get things started, display a large image like the one below from an amazing free resource over at wodb.ca.
The image is divided into four sections, each is related in some way but also has characteristics that make it the odd one out. (If you have any siblings, no further explanation is needed.) Ask your students to take a little think time to look at all four images and choose one that does not belong with the others.
Once they have decided on one, they will need to explain their reasoning for why they chose it. For example, in the image above, the star does not belong because it does not have a red outline like the other shapes.
Now that we are sharing our perspectives and reasonings, students start to discover that there is no wrong answer. Hooray! We can all be right at the same time! World peace. Done.
But what about…?
Here is where that one math teacher always politely reminds us that we cannot have world peace in math. Math must have the right answer. Just take a look at these fun little number talks from wodb.ca and let the madness begin.
Enter cooperative learning. Group your class into 3-4, give them a new image with four related concepts. They can now have a small group discussion about how the images are all related, and start pointing out the ones that do not belong.
Many students will choose different images for different reasons just naturally. This is what we want. We are hoping for a little disagreement. You may even need to encourage a little more disagreement. Respectful disagreement. Oh, how the world would be a more wonderful place if we could practice a little more respectful disagreement.
3. Classified
Scientifically speaking, not CIA speaking, to classify is to put things into groups. Like goes with like, birds go with bees because they both fly. You know. Determining which things should be placed together and why is fertile ground for a cooperative learning experience.
To begin, give groups of students a stack of cards with images or words on them. Apples to Apples Big Picture is a great resource for this.
Next, students will spread out all the cards to look for reasons to begin to classify the cards into groups. Discussions will naturally begin about why certain cards belong together.
To dial up the complexity, ask them to create no less than three groups and no more than six. This makes it more difficult for them to take the easy road with a “people” group and an “animal” group.
Finally, students will label each group that they have created with a word that describes the group as a whole. Students will then travel the room at your signal to see what other students have classified and why.
Depending on the grade level, ask them to either rearrange the cards at each table to form new classifications of cards or ask them to create a new label for the classifications that are created. Either way, enlightening and delightful discourse flows!
4. Match Mine
And now for the main event. My number one go-to strategy to get even the toughest of skeptics to believe in cooperative learning is Match Mine. I truly believe we could begin to solve the world’s problems with a few legos and a whole lot of active listening.
To get cooperative learning started, group your students. Three to four students in a group is ideal, and review ideas for handling frustration and noise levels.
To begin, create a model of 8-10 blocks and hide it from the students. Give students their own set of blocks, but be sure they don’t have all the right pieces or all the identical pieces.
For activities to be truly cooperative there must be a common goal the students are working toward. In this case, the goal is to work together to build a duplicate model of the one that is hidden.
One member of each team will be given about 10 seconds to view the hidden model before returning to their team to begin giving them directions on how to build it.
But what about…?
Here is the kicker: the student who saw the hidden model MUST keep their hands behind their backs while giving instructions. Game. Changer. Yes, this can get frustrating, be sure to review some strategies for that ahead of time.
Don’t Forget the Debrief
When you give students the opportunity to reflect and name the experiences they just had during a cooperative learning activity, you open the door for them to own it.
Not only that, you validate their experience. You give it value. A great way to debrief any experience is to draw a quick T-chart. One side will be the challenges and the other will be the triumphs.
Challenges
Having done this hundreds of times, every group names all the same things. The first challenge they always name is that they don’t have the right materials. Time, no hands, and remembering the model are always on the list as well.
Triumphs
The word triumph is fully intentional. Now you get to celebrate the good stuff. The stuff that happened because of the challenges. Fun makes the top of the list, followed by working together, time (again) and finally the opportunity to be creative.
If the teams had exactly the same blocks, they would have missed the chance to get creative.
Isn’t this what we want more of? They do.
I hope you will give these a try and if you do, let me know in the comments how it went!