Kagan Online Magazine - Spring 2011
Kagan Online Magazine, Fall-Winter 2011, Issue #45
Articles
Spencer's Thinkpad
The “P” and “I” of PIES: Powerful Principles for Success
Dr. Kagan shares insights to positive interdependence and individual accountability— two powerful cooperative learning principles. Learn how to maximize student learning by providing the right amount of pressure to perform coupled with peer support.
Featured Structure
Q & A Review
Here's a brand new Kagan Structure for you! Q & A Review is a great way to have students cooperatively review need-to-know information.
Teacher & Training Tips
Two Tips: Parent Meetings & Class Goals
Looking for a way to introduce Kagan to parents? Want to create a more cooperative class? Here are two quick tips that inspired a teacher to write about her Kagan successes.
Training Opportunities
Kagan's Winter Academies in Las Vegas,
NV and Tampa, FL
Kagan's Winter Academy is coming to both coasts this February. Don't miss this opportunity! At Kagan's Winter Academy in Tampa Florida, you can even tour IDS, and witness the power of Kagan in the classroom during a school visit.
New Products
New Instant Engagement Software
Engage students—instantly! These three software programs make it a snap to lead your class through powerful and proven Kagan Structures. You'll find structures to engage students in pairs and teams. Just paste in your own questions or prompts and you're ready for full student engagement!
Tech Tips
New Kagan Apps for the iPhone and iPad
Kagan recently released 4 new apps for Apple iOS devices. Get your Kagan apps today.
A+ Anecdotes
Two Cooperative Learning Anecdotes
What happens when the model student pairs up with the class terror? Can a Down Syndrome student be meaningfully included in a regular classroom? Read about one teacher's cooperative learning experiences.
Learning to Laugh
No Noses
Why don't Kagan characters have noses? Funny question, but you'd be surprised how often we're asked. So we thought we'd set the record straight once and for all!
What Participants Are Saying
Teachers rave about Kagan Professional Development and our awesome team of trainers!
Brain Matters
The Windshield or the Rearview Mirror?
Cars have windshields to look forward and rearview mirrors to look back. In the classroom, we always have students looking forward, but are they using their rearview mirrors often enough? Jeff shares why and how to use students' rearview mirrors.
Where in the World is Kagan?
Denmark
Shakespeare famously wrote in Hamlet that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. But that rotten thing sure isn't Kagan! Quite the contrary. Kagan is fresh and in full bloom in Denmark. For the past several years, Kagan has been partnering with training and publishing organizations to transform Danish education.
Special Article 1
Cabot Middle School North Earns Top Award
Principal Tanya Spillane sent Kagan a newspaper article, lauding her school for earning a national award for excellence—again! Cabot adopted Kagan's engaging approach to teaching and learning and has been distinguished as one of only five Diamond Schools in the entire state of Arkansas.
Special Article 2
Research on Kagan Structures in the United Arab Emirates
An investigation of the impact of implementing Kagan's Cooperative Learning structures on the engagement and learning outcomes of upper primary students studying English as a foreign language.
Special Article 3
Kagan Goes to Cabo
Nope, it's not to lounge on the beach and work on a tan. It's to bring Kagan Cooperative Learning structures to Mission School in Los Cabos, Mexico. Each year the school staff's enthusiasm for Kagan grows as they witness the transformational impact of student interaction on academics and social skills.
Special Article 4
Liwa International School in the United Arab Emirates Embraces Kagan
Liwa School instructional leaders share their reflections on Kagan. Liwa is so excited about Kagan, they will host an open house to share with other local educators the power of Kagan in their classrooms.
Letter from the Editor
It's all wrong!
When I got home from work, I hugged and kissed my kids. Then as any diligent father and educator would do, I asked them if they finished their homework.
"We're all done."
"All done?" I questioned.
"Yep! Even our reading."
"Great," I thought, "this is going to be an easy night." But just to be sure, I better double check. So I asked my son to show me his homework. He proudly pulled out his homework folder, opened it, and pulled out a double-digit subtraction worksheet. It was a double-sided worksheet with problems on both sides. And sure enough, he completed every problem without me even having to prod. Impressive!
But something caught my eye. I better take a closer look. Is that a negative in his answer? That can' be right. So I looked closely at the first problem: 27 minus 19. His answer was 1-2. What in the world? So I studied the next problem. 32 minus 18. His answer: 2–6. That's not right either! So I checked every problem on the front side. All wrong. I flipped over the worskheet and skimmed all the problems. More negative answers. All wrong. What happened?
What is a better message to communicate to our students: "Worry about yourself; don't help your neighbor."? Or, "Let's work on this together; let's help each other succeed."?
I studied the first problem again and discovered what he was doing. When he did 7 minus 9, he didn't borrow; he didn't turn the 7 into a 17. Instead he did 7 minus 9 equals negative two. He was doing negatives. As an interesting sidenote, he invented a new way to do subtraction: 27 minus 19 using his new algorithm equals 10 plus negative two, or eight. Right answer, but not what the teacher is looking for! (But genius in a father's eyes.)
So your son got every problem wrong, what's your point? My point is that I think we, as an educational community—just like my boy—have it all wrong. We've been practicing the wrong kind of teaching all along and this is a perfect example of it.
Individual worksheet work is a staple in classrooms worldwide. But just because everyone is doing it, it doesn't make it right. Had I not intervened, my son could have turned in his homework and not until Friday learned that he did the entire worksheet wrong. Brain research teaches us that learning is more effective if feedback is frequent, immediate, and specific. Feedback on individual worksheet work is D) None of the above.
Worksheet work violates core learning principles. Maybe worse is that students often learn and practice an incorrect procedure. It takes much more mental effort to unlearn something than to learn it properly the first time. My boy wasn't crazy about doing the worksheet the first time. Believe you me, he was much less excited about doing it over. It took him much more effort to erase all his answers and start again than it would have than just do the problems correctly in the first place.
If individual work is the wrong answer, then what's the right one? If you know anything about Kagan and our approach to teaching, I bet you can guess my answer. The answer is active engagement. How do you actively engage students in drill and kill worksheet work? Easy! Just use a Kagan Structure for problem solving. Try RallyCoach.
In RallyCoach, students work in pairs. One student solves the problem, talking out his thinking aloud, as the other coaches. For the next problem, partners switch roles and the other partner works out the problem while his partner coaches. Look what changes by simply choosing a different structure...
A student cannot practice incorrectly. He receives immediate feedback. If you tell your partner that 7 minus 9 is negative two, your partner will be right there to tell you can't do that. You have to borrow. And if you don't know how, your partner will show you how! Frequent, immediate, and specific feedback. E) All of the above!
You may be thinking that cooperative learning is not for independent homework. And you're right. But for all those times in the classroom where students work independently, there is another option. An opportunity to actively engage students.
But feedback is not the only advantage of cooperative over independent practice. As students verbalize their thinking, their partner gets to hear their thinking. Less skilled partners learn from hearing and watching more skilled peers. Observational learning is one of the most powerful forms of learning. It is a much more natural, brain-friendly form of learning than formal learning. Verbalization also make the process more conscious and it becomes more memorable. The verbalization process aids the speaker. In independent work, there is no verbalization. None! Students want to talk and great effort is made to stifle that need. Guess what? Students' natural tendencies are correct. If we direct the talking, we harness a tremendous natural capacity to learn.
Every instructional strategy says something. The metacommunication in independent work is: You're on your own. With cooperative structures, we transform students' orientation. Students no longer feel they are an island within a classroom. They are members of an interactive and interdependent social community. They have classmates who are on the same side. They are there to help. What is a better message to communicate to our students: "Worry about yourself; don't help your neighbor."? Or, "Let's work on this together; let's help each other succeed."? In the classroom and beyond, I think we could use more of the latter philosophy and less of the former.
Indeed, my son got it all wrong. But my evaluation was formative, not summative. He got a free re-do before he turned in his homework for a grade. Luckily he had a knowledgeable, caring, dedicated person in his corner. If you've been doing it all wrong, don't fret! It's never too late to change, to learn, to grow. Luckily, you have an entire team of knowledgeable, caring, professionals dedicated to helping you get it right! That team is the Kagan team, and we're here to help you make engagement work for you!
Miguel Kagan
Miguel Kagan, Editor
Kagan Online Magazine
Kagan Publishing & Professional Development
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