Cooperative Learning Structures in Physical Education

1. Cooperative Learning Structures in Physical Education Ben Dyson The University Memphis

2. “C’mon Jen, you’re cool – you’re doing great. ” Jen hesitates, she has just scored her second goal in the mini-soccer game. This is the first time she has scored a goal in physical education class and she is surprised that it was that easy.” Jen is in a group of 4 students in a cooperative team playing another team. She has been practicing skills with her other team-mates and now they are really been challenged by playing another team. It’s a bit daunting for this “low skilled” fourth grade girl. Or should I say previously low skilled student.

3. As physical educators search for ways to present meaningful experiences to their students, many turn to different instructional models. These activities provide a number of learning experiences valued by educators but not always “readily” available within busy scheduled PE schedule. Why?

4. Domains of Learning: • Psychomotor • Cognitive • Affective

5. National Standards: • Psychomotor • Proficiency, competency, “strategizing” • Cognitive • Understanding, applying, creating.. • Affective • Responsibility, interaction, challenge, fun…

6. Cooperative Learning Structures Cooperative Learning has hundreds of structures that emphasize different goals depending of the focus of the teacher. They can be more motor-skill oriented or more social-skill “process” oriented -- depending on the participants and the activity.

7. Cooperative Learning Perspectives • Active learners: students are not passive recipients of knowledge but are involved in tasks that stimulate decision-making, critical thinking, and problem solving. • Social learners: students construct knowledge through social interaction with their peers, facilitated by their teachers. • Creative learners: students are guided to discover knowledge themselves and to create their own understanding of the subject matter. Individuals draw on prior knowledge and experiences to construct knowledge. Perkins (1999)

8. Elements of Cooperative Learning • Face to face interaction • Positive interdependence • Individual accountability • Interpersonal skills • Group processing

9. What do CL structures mean in physical education?

10. CL structures in physical education • Think-Share-Perform • Based on Think-Pair-Share (Kagan,1992). This is a strategy for encouraging participation through critical thinking, sharing, negotiating, and performing. It is particularly useful for creating games, dances, and obstacles courses, as well as practicing game and sport strategies through problem solving.

12. CL structures in physical education 2. Pairs-Check-Perform • Based on Kagan’s (1992) structure Pairs Check. This structure requires individuals to stay on-task and help others learn, and is useful when learning locomotor, manipulative, sport, gymnastic or aquatic skills. This is similar to Mosston (1981) reciprocal style of teaching. Students work in pairs. Once they have agreed that they have completed the task they work with another pair to check their task/performance.

14. CL structures in physical education 3. Jigsaw Perform • Based on Jigsaw as originally developed by Aronson (1978). In this division of work and sharing structure, each student is responsible for learning and performing a portion of the content, and then teaching his or her portion to other group members. During Jigsaw Perform there is strong positive interdependence as each student is dependent upon others for information. This structure can be used in physical education for developing routines, creating stations, teaching dance, and teaching and reviewing motor skills and tactics.

16. CL structures in physical education 4. Co-op Play • Based on Learning Together (Orlick, 1978, 1982; Johnson et. al., 1984). Co-op Play stresses working together to achieve challenging group goals through inclusive activities in which all students are involved and their efforts accepted. Co-op Play is an appropriate structure for practicing skills, modifying or creating games, dances, and obstacle courses.

18. CL structures in physical education 5. Learning Teams • Based on Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (Slavin, 1980) and Learning Together (Johnson et. al., 1984). Learning Teams provide students with the opportunity to share leadership and responsibility roles and use collaborative skills to achieve group goals. Learning Teams are useful for teaching any physical education content, although sports skills and tactics can be readily applied. Student roles (such as recorder, encourager, coach, equipment manager) are used to facilitate group/team activity.

20. Teaching CL structures • Teacher’s role - facilitator • Students’ role • active contributor • students are positively interdependent on each other “We sink or swim together”

21. Reflection time: How confident do you feel in: • your ability to design a sequence of lessons that would comprise a purposeful, meaningful, and exciting cooperative learning experience for students? • your ability to find local expertise implementing a new instructional model like CL? What PD is available? • your ability to convince fellow physical educators that the inclusion of cooperative learning within their physical education curriculum holds promise? • your ability to convince a school administrator that funding your attendance at a cooperative learning training workshop would be a good investment for the school?