Delivering Instruction
Coaching Performance
Indicator 30 - Task-Oriented Peer Interaction UETS 6c., 7d.
Effective teachers provide students with opportunities to work cooperatively with their classmates. Student understanding is enhanced when they have to explain material to someone else or when someone besides the teacher explains concepts. Throughout childhood and adolescence, peer interaction is essential for language, cognitive, and social development. There are aspects of learning that happen best during peer interactions, rather than interactions with adults. Having students work interdependently toward jointly established goals in supportive, cooperative learning groups could increase their compassion for one another, self-esteem, positive attitudes toward school, and academic learning.
IDEAS/SUGGESTIONS:
- Following your instruction, have students work in pairs or groups of three or four on exercises taken from the current lesson accompanied by teacher interaction.
- Before calling on an individual student to answer a question, allow all students to discuss with a partner what they think the answer is (pair-share).
- Use the "jigsaw" approach to cooperative learning. Each student is given a part of a study guide to complete, for example, and becomes responsible to teach the other members of the group about that specific section. The teacher then conducts an intense review of the study guide after the jigsaw has been put together.
- Provide roles for each student in a group to engage all members by giving them a responsibility within the group. Roles may consist of the following:
- Materials manager
- Recorder
- Reporter
- Encourager
- Time keeper
- Runner