Middle School Journal March 2007 p4-13
This We Believe Characteristics
. • An inviting, supportive, and safe
environment
. • High
expectations for all members of the learning
community
. • Students
engaged in active learning
. • Multiple
learning and teaching approaches that respond to their
diversity
. • Assessment and
evaluation programs that promote quality learning
By Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed
Although I attended school for 21 years before entering the
University of California Santa Barbara Graduate School of
Education Teacher Education Program (TEP) in 1998, I had
never worked in learning groups aside from the occasional
science experiment or medical school cadaver dissection.
Yet even those experiences were not designed as cooperative
group work; they were arranged simply for the purpose of
sharing materials. Most of my classes in the TEP program
incorporated cooperative learning techniques as an integral
part of the instruction. In our classrooms, we never sat in
rows, but always at round tables with room for four to six
students. Rarely did a day go by when we did not work
together on a cooperative project such as a poster and
presentation, a short videotape, or a skit performance. I
responded to this style of teaching and of learning quite
positively, both cognitively and socially. Some of my
enthusiasm was probably rooted in my being, as I am a
global, interpersonal style learner (Checkley, 1997; Kagan
& Kagan, 1998). But I found my classmates, with their
varied learning styles, also inclined toward collaboration.
As I experienced the benefits of collaboration, I also
discovered that an integral part of the process was the
departure by our professors from the traditional roles of
imparters and assessors of knowledge. Unlike the teachers I
had previously studied
under,
my education professors assumed roles of information
resources in more democratic classrooms. I discovered that
relinquishing traditional autocratic control and allowing
students to collaborate interactively with classmates to
achieve common goals resulted in our becoming more invested
and engaged in our learning. When I completed my masters of
education degree in cooperative learning and became a
middle school teacher, I found that I followed the modeling
of my teachers and used cooperative learning in my own
classroom. I then called upon my clinical and research
training and experience in neurology to investigate the
learning research being done through neuroimaging and brain
mapping. I found evidence of brain and neurochemical
activity that supported the positive results I was having
with the cooperative approach to middle school teaching.
Psychosocial
Benefits
Consider
the increased comfort and enjoyment that students have when
pleasurable social interaction is incorporated into their
learning experience (Reeve, 1996). This is especially true
during adolescence when peer group influence plays such an
important developmental role in the psychosocial process of
separation from parents along the road to
individualization. For example, in early elementary school,
students often raise up from their seats when they wave
their hands enthusiastically in hopes of being called upon
to answer a question. By middle school, some students
consider it uncool to volunteer answers or even appear
intelligent in class. These same students are more willing
to participate and even show enthusiasm about challenging
tasks when they are engaged in learning activities with
supportive cooperative groups.
Erikson (1968) theorized that the developmental “crises” of
adolescence are turning points during periods of increased
vulnerability, and these turning points present
opportunities for the development of psychosocial strength.
He proposed that during these developmental stages the
adolescent develops new capacities and psychosocial
strengths by working through these developmental crises.
Inclusion, a sense of belonging to a group where a student
feels valued, builds resiliency. Resilient adolescents have
greater success, social competence, empathy,
responsiveness, and communication skills. They also
demonstrate greater flexibility, self-reflection, and
ability to conceptualize abstractly when solving problems.
Successfully planned group work can help to support
students during these developmental crisis opportunities by
reducing the fear of failure that can cause them to avoid
academic challenges. Well-structured cooperative group
activities build supportive classroom communities, which,
in turn, increase self-esteem and academic performance.
Neuroimaging—Watching the Social Brain Learn
Neuroimaging
and neurochemical investigation provide evidence of the
brain’s response to stress as well as to pleasure and
positive social interaction. Research on the amygdala
reveals it to be one location of an affective filter in the
brain (Pawlak, Magarinos, Melchor, McEwen, &
Strickland, 2003). During periods of high stress or anxiety
that some students may experience when asked to do a math
problem on the board or make an oral presentation to the
class, their emotional state is associated with greatly
heightened metabolism (more glucose and oxygen use)
flooding this “emotional” portion of the limbic system on
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies.
When
students participate in engaging learning activities in
well-designed, supportive cooperative groups, ... their
brain scans show facilitated passage of information from
the intake areas into the memory storage regions of the
brain.
When
the amygdala is in this hyperexcitable, anxiety-provoked
state, there is profound reduction in the neural activity
indicative of information flow into and out of the
amygdala. In the normal, relaxed state, the brain receives
information as sensory input (e.g., for hearing or vision)
into specific sensory receptive centers. From these areas,
neural pathways project this information to the amygdala.
In the amygdala emotional meaning may be linked to the
information and connections are made with previously
stored, related knowledge (Chugani & Phelps, 1991). The
new information, now enhanced with emotional or relational
data, then travels along specific neuronal circuits to the
higher cognitive centers of the brain, such as the
prefrontal cortex, where information is processed,
associated, and stored for later retrieval and executive
functioning (Kato & McEwen, 2003).
In fMRI scans of adolescents in states of affective,
emotional anxiety, when the amygdala is metabolically
hyperactive, the pathways that normally conduct information
in and out of the amygdala show greatly reduced activity.
Thus, new information is blocked from entering the
memory
banks by this metabolic blockade of the hyperactive
amygdala (Toga & Thompson, 2003). When students
participate in engaging learning activities in
well-designed, supportive cooperative groups, their
affective filters are not blocking the flow of information.
When you plan your group so that each member’s strengths
have authentic importance to the ultimate success of the
group’s activity, you have created a situation where
individual learning styles, skills, and talents are valued,
and students shine in their fortes and learn from each
other in the areas where they are not as expert. They call
on each other’s guidance to solve pertinent and compelling
problems and develop their interpersonal skills by
communicating their ideas to partners. The brain scans of
subjects learning in this type of supportive and social
learning situation show facilitated passage of information
from the intake areas into the memory storage regions of
the brain. This is consistent with the original cognitive
psychology research and theories of Krashen (1982) about
the affective filter— that learning associated with
positive emotion is retained longer and visa versa.
Reward-Stimulated
Cooperative
Learning
Studies
of brain neurochemistry also support the benefit
associating rewarding, positive social experiences with the
learning process. This has been called
dopamine-based reward-stimulated learning
(Waelti, Dickinson, & Schultz, 2001). Information
travels along nerve cells’ branching and communicating
sprouts (axons and dendrites) as electrical impulses.
However, where these sprouting arms connect to the next
neuron in the circuit, the information has to travel
through a gap between the end of one nerve and the
beginning of the next one. In these gaps, called synapses,
there are no physical structures, unlike the wires that
connect appliances to electric outlets, along which the
electric impulses can travel. When crossing over synaptic
gaps, the information impulse must be temporarily converted
from an electric one into a chemical one. Neurotransmitters
are brain proteins released by the electrical impulse on
one side of the synapse, to then float across the synaptic
gap, carrying the information with them to stimulate the
next nerve ending in the pathway. Once the neurotransmitter
is taken up by the next nerve ending, the electric impulse
is reactivated to travel along to the next nerve cell.
Dopamine is the chemical neurotransmitter most closely
associated with attention, memory storage, comprehension,
and executive function. The theory of
reward-stimulated learning
and other reinforcement learning theories are based on the
assumption that the brain finds some states of stimulation
to be more desirable than others. The brain is believed to
make associations between specific cues and these desirable
states or goals. Dopamine activity can be evaluated through
neuroimaging. It has been found that dopamine release is
increased in brain centers associated with learning and
memory in response to rewards and positive experiences.
Research found that the brain released more dopamine into
these learning circuits when the individual was playing,
laughing, exercising, and receiving acknowledgement (e.g.,
praise) for achievement (Salamone & Correa, 2002).
These frontal lobe, dopamine sensitive regions are seen on
neuroimaging as activated in pleasure and reward,
wakefulness, and satiety. It has been shown that drugs of
abuse affect nerves along this dopamine pathway. This is a
basis for theories that when the brain does not release its
own dopamine reward from pleasurable experiences it is
vulnerable to the allure of the psychoactive drugs that
activate the dopamine pathway (Everitt, Parkinson,
Olmstead, Arroyo, Robledo, & Robbins, 1999). Follow up
research found that when subjects
anticipated
pleasurable states, there was increased release of dopamine
associated with the
expectation
of pleasure (Holroyd, Larsen, & Cohen, 2004).
Many of the motivating factors that have been found to
release this dopamine are intrinsic to successful
cooperative group work such as social collaboration,
motivation, and expectation of success, or authentic praise
from peers. Because dopamine is also the neurotransmitter
associated with attention, memory, learning, and executive
function, it follows that when the brain releases dopamine
during or in expectation of a pleasurable experience or
reward, this dopamine will be available to increase the
processing of new information. That is what occurs when
students enjoy a positive cooperative learning experience,
and even when they anticipate participation in that type of
activity.
Cooperative
Groups Generate More Participation and Stimulate Multiple
Brain Regions
Cooperative
group activities, unlike whole class discussions or
independent work, provide the most opportunities for
students to express their ideas, questions, conclusions,
and associations verbally. Gibbs (1995), in her book Tribes
reported that in traditionally structured classes each
student has about five to ten minutes of individual time to
engage in classroom academic discourse. In group work, that
amount of time increases dramatically. She found that
students experienced a greater level of understanding of
concepts and ideas when they talked, explained, and argued
about them with their group, instead of just passively
listening to a lecture or reading a text.
In addition, metabolic brain activity accelerates during
active constructive thinking, such as planning, gathering
data, analyzing, inferring, and strategizing versus passive
information acquisition. When the verbal center becomes
engaged while information or a task is being learned, more
neural activity travels between the left and right brain.
(Chugani & Phelps, 1991). Thus, when students describe
their thinking verbally to the group or work on a group
chart, diagram, or project, the new information becomes
embedded in multiple brain sites, such as the auditory and
visual memory storage areas. Now, with neuroimaging, we
know that this multicentered brain communication circuitry
enhances comprehension, making new material be more
accessible for future use, because it is stored in
redundant brain areas (Giedd, et al., 1999).
In mathematical collaboration students learn to test one
another’s conjectures and identify valid or invalid
solutions. Group members are all engaged as they discover
techniques to test one member’s strategy. If it does not
work on repeated tries, they invalidate that strategy and
try another. Students who just
“don’t get it”
via a teacher’s didactic lecture benefit from the different
perspectives of classmates with similar knowledge banks on
the subject.
In literature and social studies students have a small,
safer place to try out ideas they might not express to the
entire class. They learn that there is validity to personal
interpretation, and they can experiment with critical
thinking in a structured small-group setting, with
scaffolding provided as needed via teacher prompts about
what to discuss and how to run the discussion. This process
empowers students to become more active not only in
whole-class discussions but in their homework and in
speaking their opinion outside of the classroom. This is
especially critical during adolescence when “fitting in” is
such a strong need that individuality can become stifled
(Jernigan & Tallal, 1990).
As neuroimaging evidence has shown, the more a student is
engaged in a learning activity, especially one with
multiple sensory modalities, the more parts of the brain
are actively stimulated (Jagust & Budinger, 1993). When
this occurs in a positive emotional setting, without stress
and anxiety, the result is greater long-term, relational,
and retrievable learning.
Students
experienced a greater level of understanding of concepts
and ideas when they talked, explained, and argued about
them with their group, instead of just passively listening
to a lecture or reading a text.
What
Constitutes Cooperative Work?
To
qualify as cooperative work, rather than individuals
working in parallel in a group, students must need each
other to complete the task. Students are expected to
participate in tasks that are clearly constructed and
necessary for the group’s success. The teacher remains
active as a circulating resource and, when necessary, an
arbitrator, but students should be capable of carrying out
their tasks without constant, direct intrusion by the
teacher. Students, not the teacher, are responsible for
accomplishing their tasks in the way they think best, with
accountability to each other and to the teacher’s
standards. Ideally, there is a clear rubric for individual
and group assessment, and the students and the teacher take
part in the assessment process (Antil, Jenkins, &
Watkins, 1998).
When setting up lessons for successful collaboration in
cooperative groups, consider the following guidelines that
will then be expanded upon with examples of specific
cooperative group activities that emphasize each of the
five characteristics.
• All members
have opportunities and capabilities, frontloaded if
necessary, such that different students can make their own
special contributions. This may require planning ways for
students with different learning or intelligence styles to
make special contributions to the group task (Webb, Nemer,
& Chizhik, 1998).
• Students learn to respect each other as group members.
Often this requires teacher demonstration with
role-playing.
•
The group negotiates roles with guidance from the teacher.
Designated roles can vary from group to
. • There should be more than one answer or more than one
way to solve the problem or create the project.
. • The activity should be intrinsically interesting,
challenging, and rewarding.
•
All members have opportunities to make valued contributions
to the group product
Sample
Brain-Friendly Cooperative Projects
Cooperative
group activities I have used in my middle school classes
have had different emphases and goals, but each also
conforms to these basic five characteristics of successful
group work. Examples of activities that feature each of the
aforementioned successful cooperative group guidelines
follow.
As
neuroimaging evidence has shown, the more a student is
engaged in a learning activity with multiple sensory
modalities, the more parts of the brain are actively
stimulated.
Dinosaur Extinction—Science and Math
(extinction theory and scientific notation):
In
this activity students are each given an area of expertise
that other group members do not have so they are valued for
this information. This is a type of frontloading. This
increases each student’s connection to the group socially
and academically, thereby lowering their affective filters.
Because there are elements of choice and real-world
application, the information students process is patterned
with relational memories in the hippocampus and prefrontal
lobes for successful storage as long-term memory.
In the dinosaur project, the final process of making
informed individual decisions about which extinction theory
the student chooses to support brings in frontal lobe
executive functions. The group project also incorporates
and values multiple skills and talents. This results in
more opportunity for students to connect and succeed
through their individual learning styles and to engage more
of their brains with multisensory stimulation.
Through a strategy called
tea party,
card party,
or
jigsaw,
students are first put in groups where all five members of
the group read articles and text about one of the dinosaur
extinction theories, which include:
. •
Creataceous-Tertiary Asteroid Theory
(about 65 million years ago) This theory also previews the
next topic we will study in geography, continental drift,
and the splitting of the supercontinent Pangaea.
. •
K-T Extinction
(about 65 million years ago) K is for Kreide, meaning chalk
in German, which describes the chalky sediment layer from
that time; T is for Tertiary, the next geologic period,
when all land animals over about 55 pounds went extinct.
. •
The Alvarez Asteroid Impact Theory:
An asteroid four to nine miles in diameter hit Earth about
65 million years ago, penetrated the Earth's crust,
scattered dust and debris into the atmosphere, and caused
huge fires, tsunamis, severe storms with high winds and
highly acidic rain, seismic activity, and perhaps even
volcanic activity.
. •
Greenhouse Effect:
Large amounts of methane, changing the Earth’s atmosphere,
caused a greenhouse effect. The methane source is theorized
to have come from deep-sea algae deposits and/or from
by-products of plant-eating dinosaurs’ digestion.
. •
Over-foraging:
The herbivorous dinosaurs’ over-foraging and the
carnivorous dinosaurs’ over-culling of the herbivorous
dinosaurs could have triggered mass starvation.
After
the first groups—which have become expert in one of the
five theories of extinction—have read about, discussed, and
answered questions I provided, and each group member has
completed notes that I reviewed with answers to the
questions, the groups are shuffled to form new groups. Each
of these secondary groups is the true cooperative group,
and each group member is now an expert on one extinction
theory.
Group Project:
1.
Each group member explains his or her extinction theory
while others take notes.
2. After open-ended, student-inspired discussions, each
member selects the theory he or she feels best explains
dinosaur extinction.
3. Through vote or consensus (a process they have
practiced) the group selects the theory they will use for
their project.
4. Groups can demonstrate their theory through a skit,
report, PowerPoint presentation, overhead projector charts,
a video production, models, or several of these options.
5. Each group must include mathematics using scientific
notation with exponents for the very large numbers involved
in dinosaur research, such as 50 million is 5.0 x 10 to the
7th power.
6. Groups present their findings to the class and complete
self- and group analysis reports on rubrics provided.
7. Individual and group grades are based on teacher
observations, final products and cooperative behavior.
Students
respect each other
Quiz
Show—Helping Students Grow More Brain Connections:
Review, practice, and cognitive processing of learned
information builds more connecting dendrites and
strengthens the membranes surrounding these interneural
connections resulting in faster information transport and
more efficient memory retrieval.
Using a television quiz show format, students are divided
into four teams. Each team works with the same information
source, the class literature text from which they took
notes for homework. In addition to the group task of
creating quiz show questions for their opponents, there is
a specific group job for each student. This question-making
activity occurs several times a week, using the material
from several chapters each time.
The final competition takes place on completion of the book
and serves as a third review of the material before the
formal individual comprehension assessments. The three
reviews consist of the students’ first set of notes taken
at home independently, the cooperative quiz-making
sessions, and, finally, the quiz show itself.
The individual jobs rotate each time the group meets. They
include
scribe
(writes down questions and answers that the group approves)
and
materials coordinator
(makes sure all students bring their books and notes and
get the clipboards with previous questions out of the bin).
Other jobs are
judge
(when the group disagrees about whether a proposed question
is satisfactory for the quiz show, the judge makes the
final ruling, but must back up this opinion with
reasons),
cooperative overseer
(takes notes on cooperative behavior to give the group
feedback at the end of the session and reminds students to
follow the cooperative rules already set and posted, such a
not interrupting and all participate). The
analyst
keeps track of the group’s reasons for rejecting questions.
These are also reviewed at the end of the session with the
expectation that the metacognition will result in
improvement.
Students
and not the teacher are responsible for accomplishing their
tasks in the way they think best, with accountability to
each other and to the teacher’s standards.
Through this cooperative activity, neuronal network
reinforcement of the reviewed is more engaging. The group
processing of text material offers another modality of
information input, thereby making the knowledge more
accessible for students with varied learning style
preferences: auditory, visual, kinesthetic (movement during
the quiz show), and interpersonal.
The group negotiates roles with teacher
guidance
Lincoln-Douglas
Debate: Group work involving skits, demonstrations,
debates, or other dramatizations appeals to the kinetic,
verbal, and interpersonal strengths of many students,
especially in middle school when energy levels run high and
passive sitting in classrooms with directed lectures can be
the best way to lose students’ attention. Academics are not
usually the first priority during adolescence, and
dramatizations as part of group work can bring variety and
harness energy, and teacher supervised socializing
activities in a safe classroom community can increase
belonging and confidence. When students observe modeling
and then practice the skills needed for successful group
work, they are able to build their skills of self-control,
managing their emotions, and cooperating and resolving
conflicts with others while building executive function,
all in a positive emotional state for building emotion
links to academic learning. Dramatizations have the added
benefit of activating regions of the brain where prior
relational memories are stored. The personal meaning
inherent in dramatization results in more opportunities for
new information to be connected by the relational memory
hook-ups that enhance patterning and retention.
Students work in groups, using their individual skills and
interests, to put on a political campaign supporting
Lincoln or Douglas through posters, political cartoons,
oral debates, skits, and computer or video ads. This
project requires students to work together to negotiate
rules for campaigning, rules for debating, rules for
scoring the debates. Students also need to negotiate with
group members for who does which activity such as
portraying Lincoln, making campaign posters, directing the
campaign video.
If
the initial presentation of a new unit incorporates sports,
popular music, and audiovisual technology, at least one of
these will resonate with most middle school students
through their primary or secondary learning strengths or
interests.
The
teacher determines how many students can work together on
some of these activities, but the students must first
prepare a plan (prioritizing, organizing, and judgment
skills) to show for which part of the poster or video each
individual will be responsible. For the final debates
(there can be several sets of debates, depending on size of
the class and of the groups) other teachers can be brought
in as judges, and the students give them the scoring
criteria that were finally agreed upon by compromise and
consensus.
Designated, rotating individual roles within the group can
include
recorder, participation monitor
(someone who keeps track of who is participating such that
if one member has already given three suggestions and
others have not had a chance, the overly active participant
is asked to give others time to present their
views),
creative director
(if a physical product such as a poster or computer
presentation is part of the project),
materials director, accountant,
and
secretary
as needed and with similar duties as described for the quiz
show groups.
There is more
than one answer or way to solve the problem
“What
is Life?”—Group Problem Analysis:
Bringing in all students from the beginning of a unit of
study increases relational memory. By presenting the
big picture
through a comprehensive experience that links with some
area of student interest, past experience, or real-world
connections, relational memories are triggered and the
hippocampus is activated on brain scan as the site where
connections are made with the new information that allow it
to be coded into recognizable and storable patterns.
For example, if the initial presentation of a new unit
incorporates sports, popular music, and audiovisual
technology, at least one of these will resonate with most
middle school students through their primary or secondary
learning strengths or interests. This initial exposure to
the topic will stimulate their connection to the lessons
that follow, because they were engaged early by linking the
unit to their interests or personal experiences.
Starting with an innovative presentation such as a recent
newspaper report, guest speaker, or by posing a thought
provoking question through a demonstration, teachers can
all engage students. An example is the engaging and
personally relevant introduction to a biology unit,
prompting students to define what it means to be alive. I
ask students in cooperative groups to define what
constitutes a living organism and to record their
responses. They then practice prioritizing and ordering
executive function skills as well as the social skill of
reaching a consensus as they decide as a group what
characteristics of being “alive” are most significant in
defining life. I then give each group a candle that I light
and ask them to see if the flame fits the list of functions
that define living things. They then refer to their lists,
which usually include: consume oxygen or carbon dioxide,
reproduce, react, and has a beginning and a termination.
The next question for them to debate as a group usually
presents a curious problem. If the flame fits with the
generated list of characteristics for living things, does
that mean the flame is alive? Why or why not?”
Students are authentically engaged when they start making
personal connections and asking questions that relate the
initial experience to concrete references or abstract
connections. Students will have valid responses that they
will be motivated to share because they are personally
touched in some way.
Once students are connected to the topic through their
discussions, they are ready to be engaged in the study of
single cell organisms because they are in a low stress,
high interest state with unrestricted affective filters and
increased release of dopamine.
The activity should be
intrinsically interesting, challenging, and rewarding
Cornucopia
Project:
Early engagement of attention through multisensory
experiences and high personal interest is well suited to
the multisensory, fast-paced world of adolescents who have
grown up in the personal technology age. This middle school
American history activity coincides with the study of
lifestyles of early settlers in the Colonies and works
especially well if done near Thanksgiving.
Classroom visitors, costumes, and food are of high interest
to students in any grade, and this activity always
resonates with one or more interests the middle school
students who have participated in it. For the big picture
or global introduction to the unit, we start with a guest
speaker from the community. One year we invited the
director of the local farmers markets and food stylist.
Without any advance notice (to incorporate surprise and
novelty) she entered the class in colonial attire with a
large basket of produce indigenous to the early New England
Colonies. First, she gave the students several unfamiliar
vegetables to taste. Distributing this food let the
students know it would be an interactive experience and
kept them “fed” so that they would not focus on any hunger
prompted by looking at the food. Next, she said, “You have
been told not to play with your food, but today we will
play with food.” Using humor and, again, surprise she won
their trust and kept their attention. The promise of play
with food also alerted the interest of the
tactile-kinesthetic learners and AD/HD students.
Her presentation continued with demonstrations of how to
cut and display foods to make them look more appealing. She
explained which foods were the first ones available for
either gathering or planting by the colonists, and she
finished by demonstrating the construction of a cornucopia.
She preceded this demonstration with the assurance that the
students would have an opportunity to make their own
cornucopias as soon as she finished.
This confirmation of a desirable activity before a passive
demonstration is an important strategy to keep the focus of
high-energy adolescents because they know that the
attention they give at the start will help them be
successful in a connected activity that will immediately
follow. Increased brain activation takes place when
subjects are told they will be asked to repeat or
immediately use the information or activity they are about
to learn (Sousa, 2000).
When the food designer left, all the students were engaged,
enthusiastic, and ready to start building their
cornucopias. She left them with fruits and vegetables to
make cornucopias using rolled tagboard and extra carrots,
radishes, and potatoes for food design carving.
Before making the cornucopias, we had a brainstorm session
to connect the morning’s speaker and group cornucopia
activity to the colonial unit that would follow. The
experience had generated interest in the colonial period,
and students prepared a list of some of the questions they
would still like to ask the speaker. Their questions were
compiled on a chart, and questions were added based on
their suggestions about other facets of colonial life they
believed might be interesting to investigate.
After a brief reminder about cooperative group behavior,
fair division of activities, and decision by consensus,
students were divided into small groups where they
constructed and filled cornucopias. I assigned the students
to groups based on their interests, compatibility, and
learning strengths. The latter consideration enabled
students with limited academic or social skills to
participate in groups where their creative or intellectual
strengths would be acknowledged as valued contributions to
the group project. Depending upon student interest and
group consensus, one or two students per group drew a
picture of their cornucopia, one student photographed it
and posted it on the class Web site, and another student or
two researched the origin of horn of plenty and its
relation to Greek mythology.
That initial
day’s group activity was low stress and planned for fun,
positive emotional connections, flashbulb-connecting
memories, and to promote curiosity and interest in the unit
to come. It was not, in itself, high in academics and may
have not have added many facts to students’ rote memory
file with which they could answer questions on a
standardized test, but the entire class, from the entrance
of the guest speaker to the construction of the cornucopias
and the starting of the Web pages, was engaged and actively
participating in a history class activity that was
fun.
It is not often enough that
middle school students are provided the opportunity to
associate academics with fun. When they are able to make
this association, it helps relieve frustration and
revitalize their connection with school.
The next time class met, students were still in their
cooperative groups, but now each student in the group did
Internet research about one of the 20 questions they
selected from the list we brainstormed regarding colonial
lifestyle, agriculture, foods, Thanksgiving, cornucopias,
food styling, other food careers. Their homework from the
previous class was to copy from the brainstorm list the
five or six topics they thought they might want to research
and to use books or the Internet to see which one or two
topics were still interesting and had accessible
information.
The
process of collaboritive work is associated with increased
neural activity in relational and emotional memory
connections and long-term memory storage.
Before
the next class, I added five questions (one per person in
each group). The questions added were incorporated to avoid
missing any of the curriculum standards for the unit. Each
student, therefore, had his or her own high interest,
personal choice question plus one of the five I added. The
formalized list of questions was then projected on the
overhead, and students wrote on note cards their first and
second choices of which topics they would most like to
further investigate.
To refresh students’ memories of the information they had
already learned and to share new information they
discovered doing their homework research, we did a roll
call topic for taking attendance. When their names were
called for roll, students were to respond with one thing
they remembered from the cornucopia presentation the
previous day. This strategy increases focus and recall.
Cooperation with group members was necessary to assure all
jobs needed to create the Web page would be done and
research was not duplicated. The final project of each
group was a Web page within the class Web page folder
titled
Cornucopia.
Students were able to work through their learning style
strengths and interests. They conferenced with me
individually to determine if their topic of research was at
their appropriate level of challenge.
Students received feedback from parents and other classes
who visited the Web site where there was a place to write
compliments, ask questions of the Web page creators, or add
related information. By starting the colonial social
studies topic with the experiential, artifact-centered,
novel, and motivating guest speaker cornucopia experience,
the students became curious, intrinsically motivated to ask
questions, and they were willing to do the research. In
addition, they were motivated to inquire further to satisfy
their curiosity about the questions that they, as a class,
had created, and the topics they individually selected.
Instead of being passive recipients of the unit of study,
they were co-creators of an investigation that was
developed from their own interests and goals.
Conclusion
As
the groups are working, teachers can promote the desired
cooperative behavior by modeling how students can
periodically check in with each other to answer these
questions during the activity:
1. Is everyone talking?
2. Are you listening to each other?
3. Are you asking questions of fellow groupmembers? What
could you ask to find out someone’s ideas?
4. Are you giving reasons for ideas and expressingdifferent
opinions?
5. What could you ask if you wanted to find outsomeone’s
reason for a suggestion?
At the conclusion of each day’s group time, group members
assigned to record feedback for the group reveal their
observation data in their small groups. This is followed by
teacher feedback to the whole class, including public
praise to students who have done well in the context of
group work, particularly those who are not usually high
academic achievers or who tend to be classroom management
challenges. Successful compromise and
inclusiveness,
rather than speed at solving the problem or completing the
project, is acknowledged.
Classrooms where students are engaged in well-planned
cooperative work are more joyful places in which management
issues diminish and students develop social and learning
skills. Now we know that the process of collaborative work
is associated with increased neural activity in relational
and emotional memory connections and long-term memory
storage. It is reassuring in times of rigid curriculum
requirements to have not only the academic and social
evidence of the benefit of cooperative activities, but to
also have the objective neuroscientific data to support
what teachers, and for that matter, the ants and the bees,
have known all along.
Editor’s
Note
Dr.
Willis’s book,
Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning:
Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom
Teacher,
was published in August 2006 by the Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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