Sabtu, 22 Februari 2014

Conducting an Orchestra in Your Class through Cooperative Learning Structure







Teaching students in a classroom context is like conducting an orchestra. Teacher plays the role as the conductor who manages the class and the students play the role as the musicians who express their-selves to create a harmonious music composition. In a classroom context, both teacher and students should engage in the classroom. Everyone should take part. Teacher has the responsibility to provide joyful and safe learning environment in which every student can explore him/herself in the learning process. As an orchestra, students are supposed to study collaboratively. They should consider that they are not learning alone. They have peers in their class. Though individual work is absolutely counted, but how they collaborate and socialize with the other students should be taken into account. In addition, learning collaboratively enables students to be more encouraged to learn and helps to develop their self-esteem since it creates comfortable and secure atmosphere. Moreover, it can trigger classmates to support one another.

In a classroom context, one thing that I would like to maximize the positive impact of peers is by implementing cooperative learning structures. Cooperative Learning itself is described as a large group of instructional strategies in which students collaborate in order to reach a common goal. Kagan who is concerned with structures development in education since 1968, creates Kagan Structures that most designed to increase learner engagement and cooperation. Kagan and Kagan (2009) states that all of the Kagan Structures are very carefully designed. They are carefully structured to implement four basic principles of cooperative learning, PIES; P= Positive Interdependence; I=Individual Accountability; E=Equal Participation; S=Simultaneous Interaction. Kagan Cooperative Learning offers a chance to make students active and minimize the free rider and help all students socialize with the others. And not only that, it can be applied in all situation and all subjects. According to www.indiana.edu/~safeschl/cooperative_learning.pdf, the Cooperative Learning method helps students to use their cooperation and interdependence in completing their task so that they will reach the task, goal, and reward structures. In short, they will learn to do their task cooperatively in order to achieve their learning objectives.

There are many structures belong to Cooperative Learning that can be implemented in a classroom setting. Taken from www2.gsu.edu/~mstjrh/cooperative_learning_struct.htm they are: Rally Robin, Jigsaw, Numbered Heads Together, Showdown, Really Coach, One Stay Two Stray, Think Pair Share, Pairs Check, STAD (Student Teams-Achievement Division), Three Step Interview, Constructive Controversy, Roundtable/Circle of Knowledge, Talking Chips, Co-op Cards, Send a Problem, and etc. We can choose one of the structures that best suited to the material of learning and the interpersonal skill that we want to emphasize.

Doing Cooperative learning structure is not so complicated. Nevertheless, it needs preparation. First thing that teacher should take into account is the material and the suitable structures. The other thing is, teacher should give clear questioning and instruction to the students. Since in this structures students are supposed to work collaboratively, it is better to give questions which can stimulate students’ critical thinking so that every students has the chance to share their own ideas. Moreover, clear questioning and instruction is considered essential in conducting Cooperative Learning Structure. It will help students to understand clearly what to do and minimize group confusion.

I had experienced how clear questioning and instruction are really matter in Cooperative Learning Structure. The first time I tried to implement Numbered Heads Together Structure in my class, I did not give sufficient information about the structure. I just told the students to follow my instruction without giving brief explanation about what to do in advance. Therefore, students got confused and the class began chaotic. It was not effective. Learning from the first experience, I reflected on what had happened and started to give clear questioning and instruction.

Sometime, Cooperative Learning Structure needs students to move their seats to gather in groups. Therefore, teacher should make sure that the class arrangement is possible for the students to move their seat. It is better to give exact time for the students to move in order to minimize chaos.
In grouping the students, teacher sensitivity and comprehension of the class play important roles. The effective group composition consists balance and diverse from high, middle and low achieved or motivated students. This sort of grouping will enable to maximize the positive impacts of peers. High achieved students will help the middle and low achieved students. And in the end, the success of the group is the success of the whole members. And the success of the whole members is the success of the class. This is worth celebrated.

Celebrating students achievement can be done in various ways. In a classroom context, clapping hands can be the simplest way. Hug and cheers at the and of the class hopefully will make the learning more impressive even after the class ends up. At the end of my class, I always ask the students to clap their hands to celebrate the success of the learning process. 


*This article was officially published to fulfill Peer Assessment Project of  online course at https://www.coursera.org/  Foundation of Teaching and Learning 3, on December 2013

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