This article highlights the five essential components of cooperative learning, provides a quick overview of the research behind the strategy, describes three of the most common types, and offers ideas on how to get started using cooperative learning at the elementary level.

Working in small groups, students determine how 18 items are included in GDP (or if they are excluded.) Cards turned over one at a time encourage participation by all group members.

Students publish their work in an electronic portfolio, which enables them to respond to each other's content online.

This activity will help students learn about Minnesota animals and characteristics that distinguish them from one another.

This write-pair-share activity for Calculus II students involves a hypothetical hemispherical loaf of bread with a 12-inch diameter that has been sliced into twelve one-inch-thick slices. The objective is to determine which slice contains the most upper crust (i.e., most area of its surface of revolution).

In Jigsaw format, groups of 3 students divide up and each collects topographic data for a small landform using a different technique (tape and level; handheld GPS; Total Station). When they re-group they compare data quantity and quality using spreadsheets and a mapping program. They write a group report comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the three methods.
Designed for a geomorphology course
Addresses student fear of quantitative aspect and/or inadequate quantitative skills
Addresses student misconceptions

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This activity will help students to explore characteristics of microbes that live in the deep sea. This activity can be conducted as a jigsaw or research project, and can be used with face-to-face, remote, and hybrid students.

Provenance: Beverly Owens, Cleveland Early College High School
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Savagery, treachery, lost innocenceÉ "Lord of the Flies" is rife with character development. Use this lesson to help students chart the character changes of Ralph and Jack, both in groups and individually.

This project involves a field trip to the Jordan Formation in Winona, MN. Student teams are assigned a section of the outcrop from which they are to determine a stratigraphic column. The class then performs a lateral analysis and builds a composite stratigraphic column for the formation. As a final product, the students write up the class's observations about the formation.

Project Webpages

Project Summary and Write-up Outline (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 115kB Jul7 05)
Instructor Notes for Project (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 91kB Jul7 05)
Outlines and Notes (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 1.1MB Jul7 05) for each class session for this project

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Students prepare for this activity by working with a unidirectional flume with a sand bed. We adjust water depth, flow velocity, and channel slope to achieve a range of bed states, in an effort for them to understand the controls on bedforms. This portion of the activity could be done in lecture or via another exercise that makes use of digital video of actual experiments. The activity itself is a jigsaw: students form groups of three, each group responsible for plotting depth vs. velocity plots of bedform state for a single sand grain size range (0.10-0.14 mm, 0.5-0.64 mm, and 1.3-1.8 mm). These data are provided to them as Excel files and the data were directly 'stolen' from the original depth vs. velocity plots in Middleton and Southard (1984), Mechanics of Sediment Movement, SEPM Short Course Number 3. Datathief software (available free on the web) was used to steal the data. The data are arranged in columns: depth, velocity, and bedform type. Students must plot each of the different bedform types with a different symbol, then they have to define field boundaries. It is critical that they have never seen the original plots in their textbook. The goal is for them to derive them on their own, not to regurgitate what is in their textbook or elsewhere. After they complete their plots for each grain size range, the groups re-arrange themselves into groups of three with one representative from each of the grain size groups. They then must try to evaluate the effects of changing grain size on bedform state. Finally, after completing the exercise, the bedform analysis is linked to the cross stratification that is produced under conditions of high sediment fallout rates and the given bed state. The activity gives students practice working with realistic datasets, exposure to the role of physical modeling in sedimentary geology, and a chance to plot and interpret real data. Furthermore, it really solidifies the link between cross stratification and its dynamic interpretation from the rock record.

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Gravels deposited as a result of continental glaciation are used to teach introductory-level earth-science students the application of the scientific method in a cooperative learning mode which utilizes hands-on, minds-on analyses. Processes that involve erosion, transportation, and deposition of pebble- and cobble-sized clasts are considered by students in formulating and testing hypotheses.

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The exercise is built around 4 global data maps: 1) Earthquake location and depth, 2) Location of recent volcanic activity, 3) Seafloor Age, and 4) Topography and Bathymetry
The exercise is based on the "jigsaw" concept, mixing the students to work in different groups during the exercise. DPB includes opportunities for all students to make oral presentations to their fellow students. The exercise is done over about 3 hours. I usually do it in 50 minute periods on three separate days, but it can also be done in a three hour lab period.
Although the data used in DPB are state-of-the-art, the exercise does not depend on student access to computers. Unlike many others, this exercise is based on observation and classification, rather than learning computer data manipulation skills.
The students enjoy DPB and many report it as the best activity of their semester! I hope that you will find it useful in your classroom!

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In this in-class activity, students are challenged to identify rock units and geologic features and determine the relative ages of these features without prior instruction in the classical methods of relative age determination.

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This is an inquiry-based activity in which students will need to work together as a class to solve the following problem: they must construct a "boat" entirely out of modeling clay that is capable of supporting 150 grams of cargo without sinking.

In this jigsaw, students will graph various Bald Eagle population numbers and determine the impact humans have had on the eagle. Specifically, they will investigate why the Bald Eagle was listed as endangered, the affects of DDT on eagles, and the affects of lead. Based on an original activity titled "Bald Eagle Population Graphing" from The Raptor Center, University of Minnesota http://www.cvm.umn.edu/raptor/prod/groups/cvm/@pub/@cvm/documents/asset/cvm_66866.pdf

DATA: Sea Floor Age, Volcano and Earthquake Distributions. TOOL: My World GIS. SUMMARY: Identify relationships among sea-floor age, earthquakes, and volcanoes to understand how they support the theory of plate tectonics.

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Students work in a jigsaw format, they start in an expert group analyzing one particular aspect of the earthquake that occurred (e.g., tsunami, geologic maps, damage assessment). After analyzing the data/information provided, students get into their new groups, which are a "consulting team" to make recommendations to key governmental officials about the earthquake they studied and implications for future development. These are presented in a poster session style event, which then leads to individual papers that are written about the same topic, which are peer reviewed and revised. Students are asked to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in the process and to consider changes for future opportunities, as well as connect the curriculum to the overall process of science.

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Working in groups of three, students analyze economies of scale. Each student constructs an individual short-run ATC curve, then the three students collaborate to determine if there are economies or diseconomies of scale and to create the long run ATC.

This classroom activity presents College Algebra students with a ConcepTest, a Question of the Day, and a Write-pair-share activity concerning the effect of the coefficient of x^0 (i.e., the constant, c) on the vertex of a parabola where a and b are arbitrarily fixed values in f(x)=ax^2+bx+c.