Mr. Opitz Letter:
Dear Mr. Opitz,
Thank you for letting our Curriculum and Instruction Team come visit you. We have listened to your concerns on possibly implementing formal cooperative learning to improve and take the learning in your fifth grade math classroom to the "next level." In the Teacher Resource Kit, we have provided, we offer you a rationale and valuable, informative on-line resources to help you plan and implement our suggested formal cooperative learning strategy in your fifth-grade math classroom.We hope that this teacher resource kit on formal cooperative learning will be helpful to you, Mr. Opitz, in improving your cooperative learning strategies in your fifth grade math classroom.
Sincerely,
Your CI Team: Hilary Andes, Kellie Bodle, Tommi Crowley, Amanda Greco, Melinda Jessup, Lauren Marcela, and Jeremy Wysocki
Teacher Resource Kit
Rationale:
The Cooperative Learning strategy that your Curriculum and Instruction Team recommend to you, Mr. Opitz, is Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD). In this model, heterogeneous teams work together to learn new material and then students take quizzes independently. Team scores are assessed according to each student’s personal improvement. We feel that the combination of team learning and individual quizzes supports both field-dependent and field-independent learners. All students contribute equally to the team score regardless of ability because the scores are based on individual improvement.Additionally, all students are motivated to help each other learn in order to improve their team’s score. Teams with the highest scores and students with the greatest improvement or a perfect paper are recognized in a weekly class newsletter.
Resources:
STAD Cooperative Learning Method Step by Step Resources:
After the abstract, this resource lists the steps and the characteristics of student teams achievement divisions. This is a step-by-step for how teachers can implement this strategy in the classroom.
https://studentteams-achievementdivisions-stad.wikispaces.com/1.+STAD+step-by-step
This website gives a great step-by-step explanation of the STAD technique. We really liked how the author laid out the groundwork necessary before beginning the activity. The instructions are very easy to understand and follow. For someone who has never used this technique, these instructions would helpful.
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED260023.pdf
Robert Slavin actually wrote this article, himself. In this article, Slavin explains what STAD is and exactly how to use it in the classroom.
http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415965286/studentresources_chapter8_cooperative.asp
This article includes step-by-step instructions for using the STAD strategy. It uses a science activity as an example but can be used for any subject matter.
STAD Cooperative Learning Math Resources:
https://sites.google.com/site/electronicnotebookkw/classroom-news/reminderthatitsashortweekthisweek
This is for a fifth-grade math lesson on the metric system. It completely lays out how to teach this lesson with the STAD technique.
https://ajk0006.wordpress.com/lessons/groupwork/student-teams-achievement-divisions/
This resource shows a fifth-grade math lesson plan using STAD. It talks through the lesson step-by-step and even tells how the teacher would differentiate the lesson to accommodate for all the students. This is a great example to see how it works in a classroom.
http://www.advancedjournal.com/download/30/1-2-26
This article discusses STAD's effectiveness in elementary mathematics. The study found that this technique is effective in teaching math, that it should be implemented in schools and teachers who want to use this method should be provided professional development to learn proper technique and implementation procedures.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042814012312
This scholarly article addresses using the STAD strategy for teaching math to elementary aged students. It includes step-by-step instructions and results that indicate that the students benefited from this method of teaching.
http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1385&context=doctoral
This is a dissertation that addresses teaching elementary math using the STAD cooperative learning method. We like this paper because it is specifically written about teaching elementary math.