Cooperative Learning

          For our last lesson, we taught using a cooperative teaching strategy. We started off the lesson by introducing nine terms to the students. These terms were definitely easier for the students to comprehend because chances are they already knew them. The terms were advertisement, campaign, demand, supply, slogan, logo, marketing, resource, scarcity. We were able to teach students that when supply goes up, so does demand, which may also cause scarcity because the product is in such high demand and that they lack resources to fill the supply. Students really seemed to comprehend the terms because they all seemed like they have heard them before.

Since today's lesson is on cooperative learning, we want students to understand what constructive criticism is since they will be working on a project together. We reviewed the definition for the students and then provided them with four examples and nonexamples of constructive criticism. We had students use the green and red cards to show us whether they thought the it was an example or a nonexample. This went pretty quickly which left a lot of time for the last thing we wanted to students to do.
           We came up with a "secret" project for the students to do with their groups. We provided students with definitions and a type of presentation; rap, poem, poster, and collage, and the students had to create it to present in front of the class. The point was for students to work together and show how much they know from the weeks that we've been teaching. after they presented, students got back into their groups and constructively criticized how they did. They received a worksheet paper to fill out to report their constructive criticism.

          I can see that cooperative learning is very different from direct instruction and inquiry but also why it is important. Students need to learn how to cooperate and learn with each other instead of just solely learning from a teacher. We were told once in class that student retain 95% of the information presented to them when it is taught from their peers and not from the teacher. If this is really true, then more lessons should be focused around students learning and teaching each other.