Creating a Thirst for Knowledge with Cooperative Learning

I recently attended a district-wide inservice for English teachers. During the morning, we shuffled in small groups from one break-out session to the next, experiencing purposeful activities in each that pertained to various instructional strategies and unit guides. The presenters posed questions and modeled activities, and then asked the participants to actively engage with the material. I filled my notebook with ideas that I wanted to preserve and apply to my own instruction, most of these ideas either coming from other participants or hatching from my own brain as I talked.

After lunch, everyone filed into the auditorium as one large group to listen to a speaker. The speaker, using a PowerPoint, expounded on research findings related to the educational needs of the students in our district. Although the speaker was knowledgeable and well spoken, and although I was interested in what she was saying, I felt my eyes burn with a sleepy heaviness, and I watched helplessly as my mind lifted off and wandered around. It suddenly occurred to me to check my email. As I reached for my phone, I stopped myself. “Why am I doing this?” I thought, “I hate it when I see other people do that during a presentation.” Why couldn’t I keep my focus on this speaker? Was it simply that I had lunch settling in my belly, or was there something else to it?

The oldest trick in the book.

This experience granted me a unique opportunity to empathize with my students. While I strive to involve them as actively as possible during class, sometimes, a lecture is in order. As I speak, I can see their eyes sink, I can see their minds wander. Kagan to the rescue! Kagan Cooperative Learning stands on the philosophy that “it is through student discourse and the interaction of different ideas that students construct meaning” and that “we retain a great deal more of what we say than what we hear” (1.4-1.5). This would explain why it is that I could prattle on a great deal about what I discussed with colleagues during the breakout sessions the morning of inservice, yet I have almost nothing to say about the after-lunch presentation. So how can I manipulate my lesson plans to get students talking, even when I simply must lecture or lead an extended shared reading?

Thankfully, my mentor teacher is Kagan trained, and I’ve seen her model effective strategies many times. Being that she is a well-seasoned veteran, she possesses a keen ability to determine exactly when she’s losing her students, and she pulls out her “toolkit”.  Her go-to Kagan structure, stand up-hand up-pair up, works nicely in virtually any lesson. After presenting a bit of information or after reading with students for a period of time, she stops and asks students to stand, throw a hand in the air, high five somebody from across the room, and discuss the content with them. Often she provides them with a specific prompt, such as “what do you think of…” or “name one thing that you learned from this.” At this moment, something beautiful happens: every student is not only fully awake, but is actively talking about the material.

Why is this kind of talking so important? As the Kagans report, “Working memory can only hold a limited amount of information; more information beyond about ten minutes is like pouring more water into a glass that is already full. However, if the teacher stops and has students interact over the content, students tag the information for storage in long-term memory so recall is greatly enhanced” (6.17). Like the after-lunch presenter, when I lecture or read for too long, I am only wasting water. In the weeks to come, I vow to keep students moving, talking, and thirsting for knowledge.

Works Cited

Kagan, Dr. Spencer and Miguel Kagan. Kagan Cooperative Learning. San Clemente: Kagan Publishing, 2009. Print.