The Guide to Cooperative Learning: Principles and

Strategies for Each Type

March 2, 2017 Marcus Guido Teaching Strategies

Finding a resource that explores cooperative learning is easy, but many ignore strategies for delivering the
teaching approach.
Despite this, the pedagogy is popular in classrooms across districts and grade levels, creating a need for tips
and information that teachers can act upon.
Below is a guide that covers general principles and specific strategies to use for each of the three types of
cooperative learning.

General Cooperative Learning Principles

Instead of a noun, think of cooperative learning as a verb.
Sometimes called collaborative learning, it is delivering instruction through small groups, empowering
students to work together to build their understanding of topics and concepts.
There are five aspects of cooperative learning that drive its success,according to a frequently-referenced
review from the journal of Theory into Practice:

 Positive Interdependence: Students must see that each group member’s efforts are important to both
individual and team success.

 Promotive Interaction: Students must empower each other by offering help, praise, feedback and
resources.

 Accountability: Each student must accept responsibility for fulfilling his or her role, helping the team
reach its learning goals.

 Soft Skills Instruction: Because students need to develop interpersonal skills to effectively work
together, you should give lessons and activities about teamwork.

 Group Processing: As a group, students should strategize how to meet their learning goals.

These aspects work slightly differently depending on which type of cooperative learning you use.
There are strategies for each of the three types, which are outlined below.

1. Formal Cooperative Learning Strategies

Formal cooperative learning involves grouping students for a timeframe that lasts between a single class and a
few weeks.
Your role as a teacher focuses on designing the goals of the ongoing exercise, such as completing an
assignment. This involves structuring groups by selecting students who work well together, yet have the range
of strengths needed to reach objectives.
Here are four strategies to try:

a. Address Deviant Norms

It’s easy for unfavourable group norms — unwritten rules — to develop and spread, according to a study from
the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Specifically, group norms continuously change as team members interact with one another, potentially opening
the door for bad habits. You may, for example, instruct students how to give constructive feedback. But if one
student begins to criticize others, his or her group members may copy the behaviour.
To facilitate positive interdependence, you must monitor group activity. When spotting the development of
harmful norms, explain why they hurt cooperative learning and demonstrate a solution.
In doing so, students will grow into supportive group members.

b. Assess Teamwork
Because cooperative learning requires clear communication and active collaboration between group
members, grading teamwork can motivate students to act properly.
When creating a product in groups, consider monitoring student activity to give marks for:

 Openly communicating
 Actively helping each other
 Frequently giving constructive feedback
 Consistently working to complete individual tasks

Placing this level of importance on proper group behaviour, your class should quickly learn the processes
needed to complete team tasks. If you’re not familiar with them, consider different formative assessment
strategies to reinforce your approach.

c. Play a Trust Game

Playing trust games teaches the importance of teamwork and accountability — essential elements to the
success of long-term learning groups.
For example, a variation of the trust fall activity can help each student build a connection with his or her group
members. Dividing the class based on their formal cooperative learning teams, ask them to create a circle with
one student standing in the middle. Once you give a signal, that student must fall towards any group member,
who will then catch him or her.
You can supplement these games by explaining important elements of group work, such as active
listening.
Such activities are not only fun, but allow group members to bond in a stress-free setting — a benefit
frequently seen in classrooms where learning is gamified.

d. Use Relevant Scenarios when Applicable

When students tackle real-world problems that affect them, there’s clear potential for engagement.
Classes that feature this kind of problem-based learning see higher attendance and better attitudes, according to
a medical education study. Although conducted with post-secondary students, you can see similar enthusiasm
from younger students as they collaboratively solve relevant issues.
Plus, this approach can:

 Benefit students who struggle to grasp abstract concepts

 Save your time, as you won’t have to design and present artificial scenarios
 “Allow learning to become more profound and durable,” according to a 2015 book about the
pedagogy

Used selectively, and when there’s a connection with curriculum topics, problem-based instruction elements
can create a more memorable cooperative learning experience.

2. Informal Cooperative Learning Strategies

This style of cooperative learning involves creating groups that, between a few minutes and an entire class,
work to achieve a shared and straightforward learning goal.
Due to inherent time constraints, your role is to give clear instruction and assign the completion of a product,
such as a written or spoken answer.
Here are four strategies to try:

a. Ask Divergent Questions

As students with diverse learning styles fill the classroom, you can mold cooperative learning activities to their
distinct aptitudes.
An oft-cited paper from Kansas State University indicates you should ask divergent questions. These
are questions with multiple answers that encourage creative responses, allowing students to learn from
each other’s perspectives. For example, “what’s the best way to study for a math test?”
Based on each group’s preference, the resulting product can be a:

 Short essay
 Lab assignment
 Concise slideshow or presentation
 Series of answers to different problems

This way, informal cooperative learning becomes a differentiated instruction strategy as well as a way to build
collaboration skills.

b. Use the Jigsaw Method

A favourite technique for many teachers, the jigsaw strategy encourages social interaction between groups
and gives each student a defined role within his or her team.
The method consists of dividing a task into subtasks, assigning one to each group member. Students then work
to become experts about the topics their subtasks cover. They can do so through guided research, or holding
discussions with students from other groups handling the same subtask. They then return to their original
groups to share new knowledge.
This approach teaches students how important individual contributions are to meeting group goals.

c. Supplement and Expand New Concepts

Cooperative Learning Strategies

On this page

 Cooperative Learning for ELLs

 Some Cooperative Learning strategies

 Other ideas

Cooperative Learning has been proven to be effective for all types of students, including
academically gifted, mainstream students and English language learners (ELLs) because
it promotes learning and fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of
 students. In fact, the more diversity in a team, the higher the benefits for each student.
Peers learn to depend on each other in a positive way for a variety of learning tasks.

Students typically work in teams of four. This way, they can break into pairs for some
activities, and then get back together in teams very quickly for others. It is important,
however, to establish classroom norms and protocols that guide students to:

 Contribute
 Stay on task
 Help each other
 Encourage each other
 Share
 Solve problems
 Give and accept feedback from peers

Cooperative Learning for ELLs

Cooperative Learning is particularly beneficial for any student learning a second
language. Cooperative Learning activities promote peer interaction, which helps the
development of language and the learning of concepts and content. It is important to
assign ELLs to different teams so that they can benefit from English language role
models. ELLs learn to express themselves with greater confidence when working in
small teams. In addition to 'picking up' vocabulary, ELLs benefit from observing how
their peers learn and solve problems. If you decide to assign each student in a team a
role (such as reporter, recorder, time keeper, and materials manager), you might want
to rotate roles each week or by activity. This prevents what typically happens if
students select their own roles - the same students wind up performing the same tasks.
By rotating, students develop the skills they most need to practice.

Some Cooperative Learning strategies

There are some popular strategies that can be used with all students to learn content
(such as science, math, social studies, language arts, and foreign languages). However,
they are particularly beneficial to ELLs for learning English and content at the same
time. Most of these strategies are especially effective in teams of four:

1. Round Robin
Present a category (such as "Names of Mammals") for discussion. Have students take
turns going around the group and naming items that fit the category.

2. Roundtable
Present a category (such as words that begin with "b"). Have students take turns
writing one word at a time.

3. Writearound
 For creative writing or summarization, give a sentence starter (for example: If you give
an elephant a cookie, he's going to ask for...). Ask all students in each team to finish
that sentence. Then, they pass their paper to the right, read the one they received, and
add a sentence to that one. After a few rounds, four great stories or summaries
emerge. Give children time to add a conclusion and/or edit their favorite one to share
with the class.

4. Numbered Heads Together

Ask students to number off in their teams from one to four. Announce a question and a
time limit. Students put their heads together to come up with an answer. Call a number
and ask all students with that number to stand and answer the question. Recognize
correct responses and elaborate through rich discussions.

5. Team Jigsaw
Assign each student in a team one fourth of a page to read from any text (for example,
a social studies text), or one fourth of a topic to investigate or memorize. Each student
completes his or her assignment and then teaches the others or helps to put together a
team product by contributing a piece of the puzzle.

6. Tea Party
Students form two concentric circles or two lines facing each other. You ask a question
(on any content) and students discuss the answer with the student facing them. After
one minute, the outside circle or one line moves to the right so that students have new
partners. Then pose a second question for them to discuss. Continue with five or more
questions. For a little variation, students can write questions on cards to review for a
test through this "Tea Party" method.
After each Cooperative Learning activity, you will want to debrief with the children by
asking questions such as: What did you learn from this activity? How did you feel
working with your teammates? If we do this again, how will you improve working
together?

Other ideas
A simple way to start Cooperative Learning is to begin with pairs instead of whole
teams. Two students can learn to work effectively on activities such as the following:

1. Assign a math worksheet and ask students to work in pairs.

2. One of the students does the first problem while the second acts as a coach.
3. Then, students switch roles for the second problem.
4. When they finish the second problem, they get together with another pair and check
answers.
5. When both pairs have agreed on the answers, ask them to shake hands and continue
working in pairs on the next two problems.
Literature circles in groups of four or six are also a great way to get students working in
teams. You can follow these steps:
1. Have sets of four books available.
2. Let students choose their own book.
3. Form teams based on students' choices of books.
4. Encourage readers to use notes, post-its, and discussion questions to analyze their
books.
5. Have teams conduct discussions about the book.
6. Facilitate further discussion with the whole class on each of the books.
7. Have teams share what they read with the whole class.
8. For the next literature circles, students select new books.

References
Calderón, M. (1984, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1996, 1998). Cooperative Learning for Bilingual
Instruction: Manual for Teachers and Teacher Trainers. El Paso, TX: MTTI.

Calderón, M. (1984, 1986, 1990, 1994). Second Language Acquisition: Manual for
Teachers and Teacher Trainers. El Paso, TX: MTTI

Calderón, M. (1984, 1986, 1990, 1994, 1996). Sheltered Instruction: Manual for
Teachers and Teacher Trainers. Baltimore, MD: Center for Data-Driven Reform in
Education, Johns Hopkins University).

Ferreiro, R. & M. Calderon, (1998) El A B C del apendizaje cooperativo. Mexico, D.F.:

Trillas. (can be ordered from Baltimore, MD: Center for Data-Driven Reform in
Education, Johns Hopkins University).

Slavin, R.E. (1995). Cooprative learning: Theory, research, and practice (2nd
ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Reprints

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/cooperative-learning-strategies
Launch an informal learning exercise to reinforce key concepts in your lessons.
This tactic works especially well as a way of dividing long presentations, podcasts or movies.
Right after the lesson has introduced a new or interesting idea, divide students into groups. Present them with
problems to explore and questions to address that explicitly relate to the idea.
After, hold a class-wide discussion to present and process findings.

d. Hold Three Discussions per Activity

Due to the sometimes-sporadic nature of informal cooperative learning activities, holding three discussions at
set points can provide structure and keep students focused.
These discussions are:

 Introductory-focused — After dividing students into groups of two, three or four, explain what
questions they should answer or products they should produce. Then, state elements of collaboration
they should focus on, such as frequent feedback or finding resources for each other to use.

 Intermittent-focused — For longer activities, designate 15-minute segments for each group member
to work alone. For example, they can each read a different primary source. At the end of the segment,
they can share their findings with each other and work to answer guiding questions.

 Closure-focused — Either in groups or as an entire class, give students a discussion topic that brings
together seemingly-separate lesson elements. For example, students can spend five minutes discussing
key takeaway points, applying them to past lessons.
Keeping students on track with these three types of discussions, they should have a clear understanding about
how to achieve the activity’s learning goals.

3. Cooperative Base Group Strategies

These groups last longer than formal cooperative learning teams, as members support each other
while striving to reach ambitious learning goals over the academic year.
Your role consists of creating groups of three or four, scheduling consistent meeting times and detailing
specific agendas for them. Filling knowledge gaps and helping students smoothly collaborate is also involved.
Here are four strategies to try:

a. Introduce Technology that Streamlines Collaboration

Of the many ways to use technology in the classroom, some solutions bolster group productivity.
To help base groups make the most of their time, consider giving brief tutorials about:

 Online brainstorming — There are websites students can use, such as MindMeister, to create clear
and detailed mind maps faster than written ones.

 Cloud-based word processing — Instead of exchanging documents for edits, students can use online
word processing tools — such as Google Docs — to craft collaborative written assignments.

 Educational games — There are many games focused on engaging students and addressing their
trouble spots. For example, more than 13 million students use Prodigy — a curriculum-aligned math
game.

With digitally-savvy students, introducing these technologies shouldn’t be an issue.

b. Designate Roles
Working with students to designate unique roles ensures each group member has a purpose.
Throughout the year, base groups can have members who manage certain aspects of the collaboration
process. For example, one student can moderate discussions, one can collect questions to address and another
can present research findings.
Similar to the Jigsaw Method, you can also designate roles based on subject matter
expertise. When handling math, for example, the math expert will lead discussions and help group members
by answering questions and reviewing concepts.
By doing so, you’ll ensure each student plays an important role in helping each other reach learning goals
throughout the year.

c. Give a Pre- and Post-Task Test

To gauge how well base groups are doing, give a each student a test before and after working together.
For example, students can complete a short quiz focusing on a specific group of math skills. They can then
meet with their base groups, focusing on those skills and the overarching topic. After, give a similar quiz of
equal difficulty.
Marks should improve. If not, consider spending more time with struggling base groups or rearranging groups
altogether.
The quantitative evidence you find will guide your approach to working with different base groups, giving
insight as to what successful and unsuccessful teams are doing differently.

d. Limit Scaffolding
Adjust the feedback and scaffolding you provide depending on where a base group is in a given project,
allowing for greater student control and responsibility. This approach underpins experiential
learning and active learning strategies.
As a facilitator, closely monitor students when they start a project and:

 Offer directions
 Fill knowledge gaps
 Recommend supplementary resources
 Make yourself available to answer questions
As students become comfortable with the subject matter and are comfortably working towards their
learning goals, your focus should be to:

 Encourage them to initiate new ideas

 Ensure they are fulfilling their role requirements
 Allow them to take on leadership responsibilities, as in peer teaching

This approach will help you fulfill one of cooperative learning’s underlying purposes: having students
successfully take ownership of their academic development.

Final Thoughts about Using Cooperative Learning in Your Class

The principles and strategies in this guide can inform your approach to each type of cooperative learning and
help you manage your classroom. As a result, you should see students build collaboration skills as they work to
reach learning benchmarks.
You can anticipate seeing results outside of group scenarios, too.
Refined discussions, increased accountability and improved critical thinking skills are benefits to which you
can look forward.

https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/cooperative-learning-principles-strategies/