I recently spent 4 straight days subbing in a 2nd grade class which, as I've mentioned, is one of my favorite grades, the other being 3rd. I had 20 students with an ability range that was truly staggering--from a few who could easily master 4th grade curriculum to several who could barely read and/or compute simple addition and subtraction problems. This really alarmed me. How do you teach the same math lesson math to such a diverse group of abilities-which is what I was expected to do? I asked the students if they had math groups and was told no, only groups for reading. Why not for math? I don't understand this. By the second day, after teaching the lesson, I put each advanced child with a struggling learner and had them work on simple addition and subtraction while I walked around observing and helping where necessary. It really seemed to work. The more advanced students showed the strugglers how they computed and, at my urging, how they checked their answers to make sure they were correct. I saw some definite improvement in understanding.
The following day, I reached into my sub bag of activities I've collected over the years and found one that fit right in with the SIM (Social Interactive Model). It is a cinquain (5 line) poetry activity that involves working in pairs, interviewing each other, and creating a cinquain based on the interview. To see it or to print out a copy, click on this link:
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson391/Cinquain.pdf
I especially wanted to do this activity with this class because it was blatantly obvious that there were numerous behavior and getting along issues among several children. I thought this might be a way to begin to work on this problem. Before beginning, I explained to the students that they would be working on an activity in pairs and that the pairs would be randomly assigned. I then modeled the activity with the classroom aide acting as my partner. We then had a brief discussion about kindness and cooperation and how to be better classmates to each other (listening, patience, taking time to get to know each other, giving second chances, and forgiveness, etc.) As the children gave their thoughts, I wrote them on a large easel board. We had 10 "tips" when we were done. To create pairs, I did a random drawing using their student numbers which the teacher keeps in a little bucket for assigning classroom jobs. I ended up with some very interesting couplings, including a few students who made no secret of their contempt for each other. I expected outbursts but got nothing more than a few scowls, at which point I gently reminded them of our kindness and cooperation talk and the referred them to our "tips" for positive working together chart. To watch the SIM in action, especially when it's working, is a thing of joy! These 7 years olds took off to different parts of the room, got cozy, and got busy. I heard working conversations, mingled with laughter, saw students, who rarely interacted, helping one another, and everyone seemingly, having fun--including those who initially balked at working together. To close the activity, each student presented the cinquain she/he had written about their partner.
This is the kind of small CL activity that must be done, repeatedly, with students before expecting them to tackle larger group projects--and certainly before grading them on CL skills. There are many such activities on the internet. You don't even have to design them--just search and download! What is especially important with CL is having students reflect on and discuss the experience and generate recommendations for making it better and stronger. CL needs to be an ongoing practice with ongoing discussion if students are to be successful. Yes, this takes time, but it pays off in a big way. Below is the link to ReadWriteThink.org. There is a plethora of similiar cooperative activites on this site (many using poetry), so take a look!
Until next time...
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