This past week, Monday, I worked with my jigsaw group in order to put together a presentation on parts of cooperative learning, or what it is usually known for as PIGS. I worked on this presentation with my base group, who consisted of Brian and Sara and our jigsaw topic was on social skills and face to face interaction. After we were finished creating the PowerPoint we taught to members of our expert group, who consists of Jessica, Kristen, and Julie, what our cooperative learning topic was. This was a beneficial assignment for me because I got to teach to my group why social skills and face to face interaction is crucial when it comes to cooperative learning. As I look at it, the more experience I get with teaching the better prepared I am for the classroom. I want as much experience as I can get while I am given the opportunity and teaching social skills and face to face interaction provided me with that opportunity!!
Social Skills and Face to Face Interaction
The beginning of the PowerPoint was a warm up of how social skills and face to face communication is utilized inside elementary school classrooms and how teachers play a vital role as the facilitator. After showing this short clip to the members of my expert group, I asked them what they learned about social skills and interaction. This was a great way to jump right into the lesson because it showed my members what it looks like inside of the classroom, and how teachers become involved.
Overview
- One of five key elements of cooperative learning
- Group tasks require complex interactions and social skills.
- Helps students to develop interpersonal, small group and teamwork skills
- Teachers can help students to use, and develop these skills through: explicit instruction, reinforcement, and feedback
The next slide was the Overview. I explained to my group members that social skills is a key element of cooperative learning, how group tasks require interactions and social skills, how having students work together can develop students teamwork and interpersonal skills, and how teachers play a part to help students use and develop these skills.
When it comes to social skills and face to face interaction, I learned and taught that there are six important outcomes to having social skills and interaction. These six outcomes include:
Personal Development and identity
Career Success
Quality of Life
Physical Health
Psychological Health
Ability to Cope with Stress
These six outcomes stress that when students develop social skills and positive interactions within the classroom environment and among their peers, later on in life students will have strong social skills, and this will impact the way they live their lives. For personal development and identity, it is shown that interacting with others results in a better understanding of ourselves where having few interpersonal skills may develop inaccurate or incomplete view of ourselves. This shows that we have a better sense of who we are based on relationships with other people. The second outcome is career success. It is shown that social skills enhance major skills required in the real world of work, so maintaining strong interactions will be beneficial out in the real world when it comes to all professions, from a waiter at a restaurant to a teacher. We need strong social skills in order to cope with complex situations and getting others to corporate. Then there is quality of life, which means that social skills allow people to form close intimate and personal relationships, such as friendships and romantic relationships, like marriage. We need positive interactions in order to form these types of bonds, and to make these bonds last. The fourth outcome of social skills is the impact it has on physical health. Research shows that high-quality relationships are linked to quicker recovery from illness and injury and to a longer life outcome. The stronger social skills we have, the quicker we recover. The fifth outcome is psychological health, which is the ability to build positive and supportive relationships, which increases autonomy, self-identity, and self-esteem. This outcome goes along with the ability to cope with stress. Having positive relationships decrease anxiety by providing care, information, and feedback. When we find ourselves in stressful situations, we are able to deal with it better by the relationships we have and the support we receive from those relationships.
Below are skills needed for corporate learning. These are skills that should be utilized inside of the classroom and should help build stronger social skills and positive interactions among group members.
Forming Skills
Functioning Skills
Formulating Skills
Fermenting Skills
Forming skills helps organize the group and establish guidelines for using appropriate behavior. These include the rules that are assigned to each group member, such as noise monitor, participation monitor, and
turn-taking monitor. Assigning student roles ensures that all students are participating in the lesson.
Functioning skills helps the group manage their effort and maintain working relationships. In order for this to be successful, students must share their ideas and opinions and asks for facts that make interactions easier. This will help students gain an understanding of each other's work so that no one falls behind or becomes confused. Questions students may ask include: Why don't we try this in the time we have left? Other comments may include: Come on, let's get this thing moving!
Formulating Skills helps maximize student learning and the goal is to stimulate the use of higher reasoning strategies and enhance mastery and retention. This could be done by summarizing out loud by memory or by helping a group member correct his or her summary. Examples could include: I am not sure this is correct. We should check... and We should use colors for this table...
Fermenting Skills helps understand the material that is being studies, manage cognitive conflict, search for more information, and explain the reasoning behind other member's confusion. Examples may include: Can you explain your answer? would this conclusion summarize everyone's ideas?
All four of these skills enhance students communication skills, develop interactions among group members and social skills.
Also included in the presentation were two t-charts. The first t-chart explains how students may go about suggesting ideas and what they may look like doing that. The second chart is checking for understanding and how students may go about that and what it looks like.
In order to teach students adequate social skills and prepare them for real life, there is also four steps for teachers to follow.
Step 1: Ensure Students see the need for the desired teamwork skill
Step 2: Ensure students understand what the skill is, how to engage in it, and when to use it. (Refer to t-chart)
Step 3: Set up practice situations to encourage mastery of skill.
Step 4: Ensure that each student receives feedback on their use of the skill, and reflects on how to engage in it more effectively the next time.
Check for Understanding
Using Kahoot!
This is the online quiz to check for understanding. It would not work when I was teaching my expert group, but I hope it will work this time!
On a final note, I just wanted to reflect on cooperative learning as a whole. To be honest, I thought I knew about cooperative learning and many of the components that are involved, including social skills and face to face interaction, but listening to my group members present to me their PowerPoint' s and doing my own research on my part of the puzzle, I realized that there was a lot of it that I did not know. Understanding and learning about what makes a cooperative learning lesson successful was interesting to learn about and as a future teacher, I can utilize many of these characteristics and do my best to enhance positive interaction and develop social interaction. After all, academic learning is one side of the classroom experience. The other side is developing social skills and working with one another. These are skills that have to be taught too.
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