Curated OER
Round-Robin Reading Quiz
Small groups of learners read text round-robin style, and then work individually to answer three questions based on the text. Next, they share their questions and responses and add ideas from the group. The reading strategies detailed...
Curated OER
Guest Speaker Preparation: A Cooperative Lesson
Are you planning to have a guest speaker talk to your class? Prepare in advance and help your class transform into an engaged and thoughtful audience. Before the visit, young writers work cooperatively to brainstorm what they want to...
Curated OER
Agriculture Awareness Through Poetry
Whether you are viewing a landscape painting of a farm, examining a still-life portrait of a bowl of fruit, or reading a descriptive poem about cultivating food, you can't deny that agriculture plays a major role in visual and language...
PBS
Team Work and Planning
Welcome to the Great Marshmallow Challenge. To conclude a unit study designed to help scholars develop teamwork and collaboration skills, groups are charged with developing a free-standing structure using only one marshmallow,...
Sharp School
The Jungle Project: Creating a Magazine
To conclude a study of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, groups create a multi-media magazine in which they investigate one aspect of the foods industry. The packet details the requirements for the project, and includes rubrics for...
Sharp School
Horror Fiction Multimedia Project
"There comes an end to all things" and ending a study of horror fiction with a multimedia project is "like starting a stone. . . away the stone goes, starting others. . ." In this case, groups start with a question generated by Dr....
Curated OER
Cooperative Comics
Students create comics identifying conflicts and their resolutions. In this conflict resolution lesson, small groups of students follow specific mapping instructions to illustrate a conflict and its resolution. Students present orally...
Curated OER
Creative Writing Workshop (Middle, Reading/Writing)
Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....
Novelinks
The Dark Is Rising: Problematic Situation Strategy
What items would you need to save the world from an evil wizard? Prior to reading Susan Cooper's young adult contemporary fantasy The Dark is Rising, and to generate interest in the tale, class groups must reach consensus on a...
Alabama Learning Exchange
Attitude Determines Altitude
A fabulous lesson which combines mathematics with space science. Middle schoolers work in cooperative groups in order to research early astronauts and their accomplishments. They look at a variety of rocket and space shuttle designs, and...
Macmillan Education
Teamwork
Learners develop self-awareness and discuss the importance of cooperation and communication through worksheets and hands-on, collaborative activities.
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
“Double Double Speak Speak”
Bilateral suborbital hematoma? Call an audible? 404? Have fun with “the twittering or warbling of birds,” or as 14th century French speakers would say, have fun with “jargon.” Groups match specialized jargon with plain speech, decode...
Novelinks
The Dark Is Rising: Biopoem
How well do your learners really know the characters in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising? A biopoem activity prompts readers to investigate the characters and their traits. Line by line, writers add the characters'...
Curated OER
Cooperative Learning Groups
Young scholars become experts on various topics, researching their topics and creating presentations to teach to the rest of the class. They are grouped into expert groups, or discovery groups, then compare/contrast the information...
Curated OER
Literature Circles in Action
Students form cooperative groups to read, discuss, and respond to a novel. They select a novel from offered choices or by criteria given by teacher and complete a culminating project on the novel from such choices as: creating a...
Curated OER
Wildflower Beautification Project
Students, in cooperative groups, design and create a wildflower garden for the community. They write letters to property owners requesting use of their land and then write invitations to their parents and to local, state, and federal...
Curated OER
Act it Out: Dramatizing Asian American Stories
Read and act out folktales, fairy tales, or myths from various Asian American cultures with your class. Each group reads a story aloud and then works together to create a short play or skit about the story. Suggestions for stories are...
Curated OER
Literature Circles
Literature circles let kids interact with each other and hear different perspectives. explore literature circles. Group your class into small reading groups, and then assign each class member a specific role to keep them focused. After...
Curated OER
Create a Word
Brainstorm new words for a class dictionary. In small groups, young learners read and discuss an article about how words get into dictionaries. They then develop a new word, use it in a sentence, and share their creations with their...
Curated OER
Characterization Group Search
In this characterization activity, students identify the traits harbored by a character in a work of literature. Students work cooperatively to locate proof that the character exhibits these traits and then vote on the accuracy of...
One Hen
Making Choices
When choosing what foods to eat, there are a lot of factors to consider. To help make the decision a little easier, young learners work in small groups developing short plays, stories, or advertisements that address the different issues...
Curated OER
Understanding Idioms Is a Piece of Cake
Interpreting idioms is a piece of cake! In groups, learners discuss the meaning of some common English idioms and choose 10 to use in sentences. Then, they illustrate the silly, literal meanings of those idioms and can engage in a fun...
Pimsleur
Culinary Culture
Italian culture and italian food go together. Have small groups find out all about food-related culture through research and translation. Class members conduct online research, create glossaries, find and translate recipes for a...
Curated OER
Training Students for Literature Circles
Role sheets clearly define expectations of all group members in this introduction to literature circles. By using a variety of picture books or short texts, readers can practice roles while the teacher circulates to each group observing...