Freshly Presented: Cooperative Learning

In the last lesson we went on watching presentations about cooperative learning. Despite we all have the same topic, each group presented the same methodology from different point of views which is amazing. The first thing that I learned about the coopeartive learning from the presentations was that the main reason to apply copeartive learning in class is different academic levels. It might be a difficulty but we still do it despite the fact. and also thi thing that caught my attention was the fact that there should be one high level, two medium levels and one lower level student in a base group. In the presentation of "The Differents" if my memory serves me well, they mentioned the rules of working as a group. When a group is working in the classroom all the members should whisper and while somebody else is speaking they should be silent. I think this is the main challange when the method is applied because acording to my experiences this rule is not realistic.

We watched two videos one of which was about Peer-Tutoring and the other was about the Jigsaw method. Both videos were great examples. In peer tutoring the student in the role of pupil was asking and the other was responding. While the 'pupil' was learning by listening, the other was also learning better because she was telling the topic which fertilises learning more. In the other video with the Haribo Bears was both fun and illustrative. It was a good example of the application of Jigsaw in a class because in the real ones there is always noise from children and we cannot understand what the teacher says.

From the whole activity I have learned to work cooperatively. Not only have I had the chance to observe how the method is applied in a classroom from the teachers' perspective but also I experienced the difficulties from the view of the students. At first working cooperatively seemed to slow the process down but as we went on working together I realied that it made everything easier. I had the chance to observe the difficulties of the diversity and students' levels - English in our case- but those difficulties also promote helping each other more and socialization.