Instructional designing requires strategic support

 

Instructional designing requires strategic support and (Instructional strategies list: evidence-based strategy, 2015, pp.2) lists several strategies from which a teacher can draw when designing his or her classroom. Cooperative Learning has been my mainstay in middle and high school classrooms and hence that is what I am focused on in this discussion.

 Cooperative learning is a space where students work together in a group small enough to ensure that everyone can participate on a collective task that has been assigned (Barron & Hammond, 2008). My teaching philosophy is to turn the group of students into self-sufficient gradually (Kochar, 2010) and one of the strategies that helps me here is cooperative learning.

My experience in middle school has been very positive as the kids are ready to let go of the elementary school dependence and moving to being a young adult. I usually made groups of 4 to 5 and had a task sheet for each of them. It took me a while to learn to build task sheets that ensured that the kids were able to follow instructions as mentioned on it.

 The class I remember is grade 9, inclusive IGCSE math space, with a child, let’s say E, who was ADHD and also had Tourette’s syndrome. As always, I divided them into groups and handed the task sheets. Everything worked well, but the group with E that was very restless for he would not allow them to work well. I assumed that since the rest of the class worked fine, that the problem was with the group that E was in and insisted on them to follow the instructions. This group continuously complained, and E kept running to me asking to pair up with a girl or work with me and I asked him to learn to work with others.

 Hindsight is 20/20 and after few weeks I realized that the girl E wanted to work with was a calming influence on him. I could have had a variety of grouping in the class with E paired up with the girl and the rest into groups of 3 or 4 or 5. In fact later I did that and found that the classes went perfectly when I did not insist on cooperative model for everyone. I had classes where some were in groups, some worked alone, and the rest would be in pairs. The kids finally were working in conditions that they liked to work best in and moved towards self-sufficiency.

 

Reference:

1. Barron, B., Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Teaching for meaningful learning: A review of research on inquiry-based and cooperative learning. Edutopia: George Lucas Educational Foundation. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED539399.pdf 
2.  Instructional strategies list: evidence-based strategy. (2015) Community Training and Assistance Center and Washoe County School District. https://www.washoeschools.net/cms/lib08/NV01912265/Centricity/Domain/228/Instructional%20Strategies%20List%20July%202015.pdf
3.  Kochar, M. (2010). User driven learning in mathematics. Academia.edu - Share research. https://www.academia.edu/1563753/User_Driven_Learning_in_Mathematics