Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Cooperative Learning for the Workplace

One of my favorite things about conducting a flipped classroom, is that it allows for the inclusion of so many cooperative learning activities.  I love watching as students take the teacher role and teach each other.  However, cooperative learning has its challenges.  How does a teacher insure that each student benefits from the cooperative learning activity?  How does one avoid having "bogs"--students who do all the work and "logs"--students who just sit there and take up space?  In small groups I give jobs to each person so that each person is responsible for something and those jobs switched throughout the activity.

Today, I used cooperative learning with large groups and with an application to the real world.  This activity was a lot of fun.  It got crazy, but that is normal for my classroom.  For this activity, I told students that we would be part of a "corporation".  I am the CEO; I give the paycheck (aka: grade).  They would be working in committees.  Each committee was assigned a category of regular verbs.  They would be responsible for teaching (or really reviewing because this is level 2) the conjugations, providing a clever way of remembering how to conjugate these verbs, and providing a list of common verbs in the category, as well as what those verbs are in English.  To make this activity work like it would in a business place, each committee had to chose a foreman (or "patron").  I, as the CEO, would communicate with this foreman.  Within each committee, they had to divide into sub-committees.  One would be in charge of creating an engaging presentation; the other was in charge of creating an activity which would allow the rest of the class to participate in practicing the grammar point.  Students had 40 minutes to work.  I called a "board meeting" 15 minutes after they had started working to touch base with the foremen and to make sure that each group was on track.  At this time, I told them what I saw that was working, what wasn't working.  I asked them about their method of presentation, as well as the type of activity that their group would be doing.  I talked to them about their committee members who were being "logs" and gave them ideas of how they could get those team members involved.

It was a great experience.  The students amazed me with their enthusiasm.  It was fun to watch the foremen as they moved within their groups to delegate jobs.  I loved hearing the conversations about what types of practice activities would be the most beneficial for their classmates.  As any CEO would do, I guided them when necessary and encouraged good behaviors.  Tomorrow the groups will present.  We'll see how those presentations go.


Tuesday, August 6, 2013

New Beginnings

Teachers have reported for duty in our school district, and our students join us on Thursday.  I am nervous and excited about this year.  Our French numbers have dramatically increased and since I am the only teacher to teach level 1 and level 2, I have huge classes.  It's a wonderful problem to have.

I have decided that from Day 2 I am going to continuously run my class with the integration of Kagan Cooperative Learning.  On Day 1 and Day 2, I am going to include Team Building activities to get kids talking and moving.  I figure if we first have fun, it will start us off on the right foot.  So Day 1, we are doing a Six Degrees of Separation from Madame B, where students have to figure out who they know that also know me, and a Venn Diagram with their assigned partners for likes and dislikes.

Day 2, students will be assigned their groups for the next four weeks.  In those groups, they will discuss things that they all like by doing a round robin share time, then decide on a group name.  Then, in those groups, they will play triangle tag.  To play triangle tag, three group members hold hands to create a triangle.  The fourth person stands outside of the triangle and  has to try to tag the person in the triangle that is furthest away, BUT the people in the triangle try to prevent that from happening.  The group that goes the longest wins and has bragging rights.

I will include a lot of French in my explanations and encouragements for these days in order to be modeling target language as I go along.  I am excited to see how it goes.  I met my freshmen today and they are awesome!

My next task is to create a list of gambits, or positive reinforcements, to teach the students.  I want a list of encouraging phrases that they can use to help each other. Hopefully, I will get that list together soon.

As your school year begins, good luck!  Remember, we are in it for the kids.  As I said in my Teacher of the Year, Back to School speech, we have the power to change lives each and every day.  Let's do it!