TASK 2

Using Cooperative Learning in your Unit Plan.

The first important and vital aspect to enhance cooperative work successfully is good communication and understanding. We all should be conscious about the diversity of opinions each student/classmate might have and how they are expressed and understood. We have to take into account that good communication it does not mean to exchange information but also the way the message is listened in order to understand the full meaning of what is being said, so what is intended to say is what it is understood. Being open-minded and respectful will help to avoid misunderstandings during the cooperative work sessions.   

The second aspects that might be taken into consideration are the roles within a team and the share responsibility. It is necessary to highlight that all contributions made by students/classmates should be equally considered, otherwise feelings of inferiority or superiority might appear as well as unconsciously their self-esteem might be undermined. In order to avoid these drawbacks each student/classmate need to know what they are mend to do, how, who with and what for. If they cannot appreciate the functionality of their actions they will disperse their efforts and lose track. A good idea to make cooperative work works it would be sharing responsibility for planning by dividing tasks based on each other strengths and interests. Delegating the tasks they will be able to learn from their classmates as they are putting in common their knowledge into a cohesive lesson plan.   

Class Organization: Workgroups and Pairs

Cooperative Learning Technique 1: Jigsaw Groups for cooperative learning Task you are going to work: Description The class will be divided in six groups of three. First of all, the teacher will give one picture about different seasons to each group, without saying anything about them. Then, s/he will give the instructions. They will have to explain which objects and people appear in the picture and say what they are doing. They will have the dictionary to look for some words, but only if it is really necessary. The teacher will go around the class and will listen to the pupils and help them making questions like: How many people are there? What are they doing? Why? What is this? Do you think that all this pictures are from the same place? After some minutes, one member of each group will explain its group conclusions to another group (remix the groups in order that each member of a group explains the conclusions to another group).  The teacher can ask more questions to make them think more about the pictures. Description Conclusion. There is a river, the Nile, and it has a lot of water. It is an inundation. Then, farmers are planting vegetables. Finally, people collect vegetables and it starts again. So, the Egyptians divided the year into 3 seasons, according to the Nile river. Then, the teacher gives to each group one piece of paper that has three descriptions. Pupils have to match each description with the correct season. Finally, they will correct it aloud, the whole class.

Cooperative Learning Technique 2: Tea Party Task you are going to work: Description After doing the previous activity, pupils will have to form groups of 4 with different classmates of the pair they will have had in the last activity. With this group, students will use their description to play “what do I have in my head?” game. One pupil will have a picture of an Egyptian god in his/her head with the correct name, and the student will have to make questions to his/her classmates to guess what God his/her classmate have in his/her head. But pupils can answer questions just using yes or no answers. The questions that the classmate can make are: Are you a …? Yes, I am / No, I am not.  Do you wear…? Yes, I do / No, I do not. Have you got…? Yes, I have / No, I have not. Do you… (Action)? Yes, I do / No, I do not. These questions will be written in the blackboard, as a help for pupils. With this activity, students use and practice the different structures they have been reading in the previous activities, and they will have learnt in previous units. can find the cards with the Egyptians gods’ picture accompanied with its appropriate name, and also a model of the diadem pupils will wear on its head to avoid see what god they have to guess by asking questions to its classmates. Annex 14