Description of the Practice

Students regularly work together in pairs, triads, or groups of four or five. Their task may be to discuss a piece of literature, solve a problem, revise one other’s written work, or conduct an experiment, or create a joint product such as a written report, artwork, or presentation. Cooperative learning groups are intended to promote positive interdependence and individual accountability. Tasks may be highly structured by the teacher, as in reciprocal teaching, where students are provided with scripts for discussions. Alternatively, a teacher may simply instruct one member of a dyad to summarize for the other member what he or she has heard or read.

Two aspects of peer-mediated/cooperative learning are particularly important for ELLs:

1) Cognitively complex discourse. In their shared activity, students regularly summarize, clarify, challenge, analyze, negotiate meaning, evaluate, justify, and make predictions.

2) Heterogeneous grouping. Teachers deliberately group students with different characteristics together. This encourages students to learn from each other both academically and socially. Heterogeneous grouping can take many forms: cross-age tutoring, groups with members whose ethnicity, gender, first language vary, groups whose members possess different sets of academic strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Elements of the practice

Ms. M.’s approach is interdisciplinary, project-based and student-centered. She carefully structures group activities ahead of time, but "The students do most of the talking in my class."

One activity was designed for students to explore different ways to communicate using different kinds of symbols (dance, metaphor, pictographs, etc.), drawing on work they had done in their Native Americans and the Environment unit.

First, while the students were at lunch, Ms. M. placed a card on each of four tables. On each card were directions for a different group activity, listing the steps they were to take. The teacher then broke the class up into work groups of about four students, accordingly to how students worked most effectively together. They worked together easily, and then made a presentation to the class on their activities.

One group created a dance from a legend; another used pictographs to tell the story of a legend, one created a poetic riddle, " Who am I?" about a North American mammal they had researched. After their presentations, they rated each other on both their group participation and their presentations. (See Portfolio Section D.)

Ms. M. is careful to reinforce cooperative values. For example at one point, when children were about to respond to each other’s presentations, she reminded them to start off with a compliment, and asked, "Why do we do this?" Children were able to answer sensibly, "so that the person will feel comfortable." That is, they do understand the importance of building trust and taking people’s feelings into account, even though they may not always put their words into actions.

Evidence that the Practice Was Effective

A. Students’ written products

As seen in these samples, students’ writing, including first and final drafts, meets the three ELA standards, for writing a report, producing a legend, and conventions, grammar and usage of the English language.

B. The class’ results on their NYS ELA exam, taken in February, 2000

16 out of 18 students received the highest score, 4: ".....Students’ writing is well organized, thoroughly developed, and uses sophisticated and effective language, with few or no errors in spelling, grammar or punctuation." The remaining 2 students scored 3.

C. Students’ written responses to the question, "How does working in cooperative groups help you learn?"

Below are selected responses, which indicate children’s understanding both of the benefits and the limitations of working in groups.

"I think it’s very good to work in groups and then write something, because it gives me much more ideas and thoughts. For example at the museum when my partner said an idea about the diorama, I thought about it too, and we made it into a bigger thought."

"....if I heard or saw a good idea which would fit my legend then I would insert it in my legend, and if I wrote something wrong somebody would tell me the correct spelling."

"When I work alone on something like my legend I can get good ideas by concentrating. When I work with a group on something like making a story pictograph then I get ideas about how we should make the pictograph or how we draw the pictures. Sometimes it’s better to work alone and sometimes it’s better to work together."

D. The teacher’s observations:

According to Ms. M., in cooperative learning, students feel freer to express their thoughts in small groups than in front of the whole class and teacher. This active participation increases both their language skills and their cognition. Students also benefit from the input–ideas and constructive criticism of their work–that they get from their peers in the group.

Learner and School Contexts

Ms. M. has been teaching a 4th grade self-contained, Russian enriched bilingual class for 2 1/2 of the past four years. Depending on the activity, desks are arranged separately or in groups of six to form tables. There are math, reading and science stations, and many samples of standard-meeting student work on the walls, in both Russian and English, in different content areas.

During this past year, students spent roughly 1/4 of the time working on a thematic problem-based unit, "Native Americans and the Environment." They visited the Museum of Natural History, constructed teepees, read Native American legends, researched animals, wrote reports, and created their own legends, songs, dances and drawings. Much of their work in this unit was done in cooperative groups.