Marzano 3

In regards to Marzano's Chapter 7, Cooperative Learning, I am a believer. As I frequently encounter and engage in conversations with my colleagues, the #1 question ( and complaint, to be truthful) each has in regards to CL refers in some way to the following challenge: "How do I get the students to do their own work, and not just copy the work of someone else in their group? Every time I use CL in class I either get calls from parents who complain about their child doing all the work, or I get complaints from students to the same effect. What do I do to solve this dilemma?" The key can be found in the third characteristic that defines CL, which is Individual and Group Accountability. In my experience, teachers who face the above mentioned challenges have not spent sufficient time thinking through the "accountability" issue. A good question to ask oneself when developing CL activities is, "Will the way I have this activity structured help individual students master the intended concepts?" If the answer is yes, then you are well on your way to developing an activity which will address the aforementioned problems. If the answer is no, then either there is a need for additional parameters, or possibly different parameters until the answer comes back yes. Whenever I have been able to answer this question in the affirmative, the activity I used was successful, and the issue of accountability was a non-factor. Hopefully, there will more teachers who are willing to implement CL activities into their classroom, and hopefully they will experience sufficient success to keep them using CL on a regular basis. As I said at the beginning, I am a believer!!