Tech Standard 8-Information Literacy Skills
The competent teacher will develop information literacy skills to be able to access, evaluate, and use information to improve teaching and learning.
The competent teacher will develop information literacy skills to be able to access, evaluate, and use information to improve teaching and learning.
*8E. The competent teacher structures and facilitates cooperative learning groups as part of students’ tasks and assignments.
Artifacts: These are photographs of some of the 4th graders in my Esperanza Rising cooperative reading group. We spent an hour a day for three weeks reading this novel together and evaluating character traits to better understand the concept of characterization. I helped facilitate the group by showing them how to use sticky notes to mark pages where they found details they thought were relevant so that we could discuss as a group every few pages. These photographs show them working together to complete the final project (a "baseball card" where they draw a character on the front and highlight their character traits on the back), as well as their books full of sticky notes.
Artifacts: These are photographs of some of the 4th graders in my Esperanza Rising cooperative reading group. We spent an hour a day for three weeks reading this novel together and evaluating character traits to better understand the concept of characterization. I helped facilitate the group by showing them how to use sticky notes to mark pages where they found details they thought were relevant so that we could discuss as a group every few pages. These photographs show them working together to complete the final project (a "baseball card" where they draw a character on the front and highlight their character traits on the back), as well as their books full of sticky notes.
Reflection
I learned two important lessons from this experience. The first is that the cooperative learning group structure works well for this kind of assignment because all seven students had the opportunity to evaluate information together. The second is that asking the students to keep track of relevant information with sticky notes works well, but instructing them to notate on the sticky notes wasn't the best idea because oftentimes one student would ask, “Can we stop reading so I can write a sticky note?” and that would break the overall focus of the reading activity.
I recently started this same cooperative learning group activity with a new set of students in a different class. What I am doing differently is having them just use a sticky note, without writing on it, to mark details or passages on pages they want to discuss with the cooperative group. My first run at facilitating the reading group was a bit chaotic, in that they were learning from each other, but they had a hard time staying on task. I learned from this experience that students learn from each other when given the opportunity to evaluate information together and with a little bit of logistical tweaking, I helped keep the second round of students on task.
I learned two important lessons from this experience. The first is that the cooperative learning group structure works well for this kind of assignment because all seven students had the opportunity to evaluate information together. The second is that asking the students to keep track of relevant information with sticky notes works well, but instructing them to notate on the sticky notes wasn't the best idea because oftentimes one student would ask, “Can we stop reading so I can write a sticky note?” and that would break the overall focus of the reading activity.
I recently started this same cooperative learning group activity with a new set of students in a different class. What I am doing differently is having them just use a sticky note, without writing on it, to mark details or passages on pages they want to discuss with the cooperative group. My first run at facilitating the reading group was a bit chaotic, in that they were learning from each other, but they had a hard time staying on task. I learned from this experience that students learn from each other when given the opportunity to evaluate information together and with a little bit of logistical tweaking, I helped keep the second round of students on task.