Excerpted from Creativity and Collaborative Learning: The Practical Guide to Empowering Students, Teachers, and Families, Second Edition, edited by Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ph.D., Richard A. Villa, Ed.D., & Ann I. Nevin, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2002 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The following are three examples of cooperative education teams in action. Each is a composite of the actual experiences of a number of cooperative education teams functioning in Vermont schools. The descriptions are intended to illustrate the diversity among teams in terms of composition, size, and the way in which they handle the critical elements of cooperative learning structures.

An Elementary Language Arts Team

In a school committed to providing children with heterogeneous learning opportunities, a 15-year veteran teacher of the fourth grade and a novice special educator collaborated to meet the needs of all of the students placed in the fourth-grade classroom. Fourth graders who were eligible for special education or other special services received their support within this general education classroom.

The two teachers differed tremendously in training background and experiences. In the past, the fourth-grade teacher relied primarily on a basal series to teach her students to read; the special educator was trained to deliver instruction in phonics to individuals or small groups of learners. One commonality was mutual interest in cooperative learning. The fourth-grade teacher had recently completed a course in cooperative learning and the special educator had had experience with cooperative groups in his graduate training program. This team decided to use cooperative learning groups in two areas of reading: drill and practice in sound-symbol relations and answering comprehension questions about passages in the basal reading text. They met at least twice a week to plan and every day they co-instructed during the 45-minute reading block.

From the start, the two teachers shared responsibility for selecting objectives and materials. Every lesson included a review of phonetic skills and a set of comprehension questions for student groups to answer. During the first marking period, the fourth-grade teacher assumed primary responsibility for the lesson design. She presented the task to the students while the special educator assisted in monitoring student progress in social skill acquisition. The classroom teacher collected anecdotal data for four student groups; the special educator collected data for three groups. Both teachers provided students with feedback regarding their use of collaborative skills. The classroom teacher graded all the papers and provided feedback regarding academic performance to the students and their parents.

During the second marking period, the special educator took on a more active role and co-designed lessons with the classroom teacher. On occasion, he also explained the task and social skill objectives to the students. By the third marking period, the classroom teacher and the special educator were rotating roles and responsibilities on a daily basis. One explained the objectives, the task, and the expected outcomes, while the other assumed primary responsibility for monitoring and processing individual and group performance of the desired social skills. They also took equal responsibility for grading student products, meeting with parents during parent-teacher conferences, and providing one another with feedback regarding their instruction.

Both teachers found this partnership professionally valuable and stimulating. In an effort to further refine their skills and meet student needs, they decided to expand the membership of their cooperative education team. They invited a Title I teacher, who had expertise in alternative strategies for teaching reading and the development of thematic units, to team teach with them and to attend their Tuesday and Thursday planning meetings. The original two-member team believed the Title I teacher could help them to develop interdisciplinary units, motivate the students, and breathe new life into the team. The Title I teacher accepted because she wanted to learn cooperative group instructional methodology so she could meet the needs of her students through a classroom rather than a pull-out service delivery model. She also welcomed the opportunity to develop a closer professional relationship with her colleagues. Two years later, all three instructors continue to meet twice weekly for planning and to team up to deliver language arts instruction a minimum of 4 days per week.

A Middle School Social Studies Team

A sixth-grade social studies teacher and a special educator have worked as a cooperative education team for 4 years. They team teach a minimum of 3 days a week. This team does not have a set meeting time for planning; instead, they mutually decide, from week to week, when and where they will conduct the next planning meeting. Neither team member has had “formal” training in cooperative group learning, but both have had the opportunity to team teach extensively with other school personnel who are considered outstanding in the design and delivery of cooperative group learning experiences. In addition, both team members have had training in effective instruction and collaborative teaming (Thousand & Villa, 2000). They try to employ the principles of cooperative teaming when they meet to plan cooperative learning lessons.

This team chose to split academic and social instructional responsibilities. Because of his knowledge of social studies content and his enthusiasm for the subject matter, the classroom teacher determined and explained the academic objectives. The special educator, who is familiar with various social skills curricula and is experienced in facilitating social skills groups for middle-level students, determined and explained the social skill objectives. Both teachers monitored student progress and intervened to teach academic and social skills. The classroom teacher made sure that students summarized their learning daily, whereas the special educator guided the processing related to the cooperative skill objectives.

The members of this team recently decided to take a cooperative learning summer graduate course together and to invite colleagues with more experience and expertise in cooperative group learning to observe and provide them with feedback at least once each marking period.

A Secondary School Science Team

A high school science teacher, who relied primarily on whole-group instruction and lab activities to teach homogeneous groups of high-ability students, decided to try cooperative learning structures. She stated two reasons for taking this new instructional approach. First, she had received strong written negative feedback from her department chair about her continued failure to use a variety of instructional approaches. Second, the school board had adopted a policy that virtually eliminated homogeneous grouping and tracking from the high school. The teacher recognized that soon the composition of her classes would be more diverse and that new instructional strategies, such as cooperative group learning, might enable her to better meet her students’ needs and to please her supervisors.

During the previous year, the science teacher had overheard several teachers in the lounge commenting on how a special educator (referred to as a collaborating teacher in this school system) with expertise in speech and language had assisted them to acquire or refine their cooperative learning instructional skills. The science teacher thought that this collaborating teacher had a great sense of humor and might be an enjoyable work partner. The science teacher approached the collaborating teacher with an invitation to form a cooperative education team for the class period prior to lunch. The invitation was quickly accepted. The collaborating teacher saw it as an opportunity to acquire content knowledge that would assist him in working with students who are eligible for speech-language services and who struggled with the vocabulary and content of the science classes.

The science teacher (with her expertise in science) and the collaborating teacher (with his expertise in cooperative learning, verbal and nonverbal communication, effective instruction, and individualizing and adapting instruction) formed a cooperative education team. During the first year, they had numerous differences in educational philosophy and approaches to teaching and classroom management. Initially, the collaborating teacher reported feeling more like a teaching assistant than a teacher during the actual instructional period. In retrospect, he identified the primary source of those feelings as his lack of content mastery during the first year of the team relationship. The science teacher noted that she felt very dependent on the collaborating teacher for the design and presentation of the cooperative learning segments of lessons. She also stated that without the skill and patience of the collaborating teacher, she would have given up using cooperative learning structures.

The science teacher readily acknowledges the many skills she has acquired to design more active student-learning experiences and to accommodate student differences. The collaborating teacher points to the science content he has acquired and the skills in conflict resolution that were refined as he and his teammate developed a classroom management system that was mutually acceptable. Interestingly, both acknowledged that discipline problems diminished when the students were trained in how to work as a member of a cooperative learning group and given more responsibility for their own and one another’s acquisition of academic and social skills.

During the second year of the team relationship, a student with Down syndrome enrolled in the team’s “college-level” biology course. She provided the team with the opportunity to refine skills in designing group-learning experiences in which student objectives are individualized. The team wanted this learner both to contribute meaningfully to group activities and to achieve her individualized education program (IEP) objectives. They decided on several strategies. First, they decided to use a peer tutor to preteach some of the science content to the young woman during her study hall. The science teacher recruited a former student who had demonstrated mastery in the science content of this class as the peer tutor. The collaborating teacher provided initial and ongoing training, support, and evaluative feedback to the peer tutor. Second, they frequently assigned to the student with Down syndrome the role of timekeeper in her group, thus addressing the time-telling and time-keeping needs identified in her IEP. Third, they reduced the amount of content for which this student was held accountable. Fourth, with the permission of the young woman and her parents, the members of her cooperative groups assisted her and her teachers to determine appropriate instructional and social skill objectives, accommodations, and modifications.

The members of this cooperative education team expressed confidence in their ability to design exciting and appropriate group-learning experiences. Both are involved in planning the transition of a young man with multiple disabilities to their school. The science teacher has requested that this young man be placed in one of her classes and, with her collaborating teacher teammate, has begun designing cooperative group science lessons to address his IEP goals for increased vocalization, communication board use, and age-appropriate social interactions, along with the academic and social skills objectives of the other students in the science class.

Check out this guide for creating a cooperative group lesson that you can use in your classroom.

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