Presentations - WILD to Cooperation

The soccer festival was partially rained out Saturday which left me motivated to complete the handout for the local educational conference next week. I worked up my handout on aspects of cooperative learning with an activity (Determining "what knowledge is of most worth" based on Spencer's 1859 view and the 2006 view of the European Union). Then I started reflecting back on what was my first professional development type presentation. Back in 1987 I was trained to be a Project WILD presentor and as part of getting trained you had to have a few presentations set-up to deliver. Those were my first - I believe. One of the hardest of those was one I delivered to a group of elementary teachers who were being paid to spend their summer studying how to teach chemistry to their kids. The grant recipients hired me to deliver a July 4th Project WILD  workshop to the group. Nobody really wanted to be there, but it went fairly well until it started to rain in the afternoon. A 1-2 hour activity of making lifesize drawing of whales in the sands of the Mississippi Gulf Coast turned in to a scramble to find activities to fill the time slot. The participants were kind though and evaluation turned out positive all things considered.

Below is the hand-out for my last professional development presentation.

Cooperative Learning – Theory to Practice
Johnson, Johnson and Holubec: "Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.”
Cooperative Learning in the Classroom, 1994

5 Aspects
1.Face-to-Face Promotive Interaction

Method: Encourage discussion of ideas and oral summarization.

Today’s Discussion: What knowledge is of most worth?

2. Positive Interdependence

Students must feel that they need each other in order to complete the group's task. They "sink or swim together."

Methods: jigsawing information, limiting materials, single team product, team roles (recorder, reporter), or by randomly selecting one student to answer for the team.

Today’s Roles: Chief Operating Officer, Language & Safety Monitor, Quality Control Manager, Equipment Engineer, External Affairs Representative

3. Individual Accountability/ Personal Responsibility

Students must feel that they are each accountable for helping to complete a task and for mastering material.

Today’s Method: Randomly select one person to answer.

4. Interpersonal and Collaborative Skills

Method: Actively teach social/collaborative skills like leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, conflict-management skills

Today’s Process: Include & encourage everyone in sharing, listening to, and valuing ideas.

5. Reflection/Group Processing of Interaction

Method: Give students the time and procedures to analyze how well their groups are functioning and how well they are using the necessary social/collaborative skills.

Today’s process:

As a team decide which answer best suits the way your team worked together and complete the remaining sentences.

1. Everyone shared ideas. YES NO

2. Everyone listened to each others ideas. YES NO

3. We did best at____________________________________________________________

4. Next time what could we improve at and how _____________________________________


Information for Activities

‘What Knowledge Is of Most Worth’

Recommendations of Herbert Spencer (in descending value):

(1) activities that relate directly to self-preservation,

(2) activities that indirectly minister to self-preservation,

(3) activities having to do with the rearing of offspring,

(4) activities that pertain to political and social relations,

(5) activities that relate to the leisure part of life and are devoted to the tastes and appetites.



Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union, 2006,
( in no particular order)

1. Communication in the mother tongue

2. Communication in foreign languages

3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology

4. Digital competence

5. Learning to learn

6. Social and civic competences

7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship

8. Cultural awareness and expression

In addition, "critical thinking, creativity, initiative, problem solving, risk assessment, decision taking, and constructive management of feelings” are considered important across all eight key competences.