Raewyn Green - Writing PLD Cooperative Learning

Raewyn came today and ran some writing PLD for the staff.

The session was on Cooperative learning.
We looked at what you needed for a cooperative learning session. These are:
* Groups of students
* Mixed ability
* Teacher choice
* groups of 3-4 max

Each student is assigned a task as part of the group - These are the Organiser, the Go-fer and the Time keep. The organiser keeps everyone on task and the only once that can communicate with the teacher, the Go-fer fetches everything you need and the Time Keep keeps an eye on the time. Decide who is going to present at the end, as this means that everyone is involved.

These are the activities we did. The book we looked at was Lester and Clyde

Telling the Tale.

Teacher needs to prepare approx 20 – 25 key words or phrases from the story – these are put onto a table and words cut up and put into little plastic bags. Make sure that the key words you give will actually have clues for the first three questions e.g. who might be involved, where might this have happened, when might this have happened.

The other question re what might have happened all the cards can be used. I like to have sentence answers to the questions when the groups report back.

1. Materials manager – pack of key words and phrases, questions for you all to help answer – read through the questions and check that the task is understood. Just need to talk about your ideas – none can be wrong as it is What do you think??? One of your group will be asked to report back but you will not know who that is until the time.

2. 15 minutes to work on questions and then reporting back time.

After all the reporting back :

3. Guided or Shared reading of the story.

Concept Mapping:

4. As a group decide on the 8 key words that are the most important to the story and make a Concept Map – e.g. place the 8 key words on an A3 sheet of paper – around the edge and draw lines between the key words – rite a sentence showing the connection between the two key words.

5.     Dictated Drawing

Teacher decides on 8 key ideas from the story. Students divide an A4 sheet of paper into 8 parts. Each part is to sketch the key idea using pictures and only key words

Teacher reads each Key Idea 3-4 times and gives the students  about 1-2 minutes to complete the sketch

When 8 key ideas are completed students work in pairs and retell the story using their dictated drawings.

6.     Sentence time

Students work in groups of 2.

Use the list of key words and think of sentences joining two of the words each round. Must say the two words at the beginning of each sentence.

Scored on the whiteboard as to the complexity of the sentence.

e.g. 5 avengers and disappeared

Five avenger aircraft left Fort Lauderdale on a routine mission when something went horribly wrong and they all disappeared.

I really enjoyed the cooperative learning idea and how everyone was given a specific job. I can see it working well to develop leadership in my class and will run awesome alongside the way I am trying to set up my literacy programme, where the students support each other.