COOP TEACHING STRATEGY

By: Dr. Prema Gaikwad

Coop is a Cooperative Learning strategy that uses prior knowledge as the basis for building new knowledge. The strategy is best suited for lessons where foundational concepts are to be learned such as vocabulary, formulas, memory verses, and countries/capitals. The steps of Coop are as follows:

1. The teacher gives a pre-test on the lesson (vocabulary, memory verses, etc.)
2. The teacher provides the answers and students check their own answers.
3. On note cards or slips of papers, students write the data on the items they missed (for each item, a separate card/paper is used).
4. Using Turn to Your Neighbor, each student gives his/her set of cards/papers to the neighbour who will teach the items. This goes on till all the answers are learned when the cards/papers are won back. The process is switched with the one who taught taking the role of the student who learns the items he/she missed.
5. When the whole class is through with the procedure, the teacher gives a post-test. Students generally perform very well indicating that they learned the items through peer teaching.

Most often, this strategy is found to be more effective than if the teacher taught the whole class the same set of data, as students are able to receive individual attention based on the items they do not know. Limit this strategy to manageable type of data. For more complex data, use teacher-mediated strategies.