example of co-op learning for students with disabilities-holocaust-World War II

There are many teachers that feel students can learn in a variety of ways.  One of those ways would be cooperative learning and group work in teams.  Cooperative learning is when a group learns a subject or certain topic together and almost everything they learn in the activity is “new” to the students or mostly “new” to them.  When doing group work in teams, it is usually a topic that had been discussed in class and the students are asked to create some sort of presentation in small groups to expand on what they have learned. The two situations are very similar, but usually have different outcomes within the classroom.

            There are many ways a teacher could incorporate cooperative learning in the classroom. Say an English class is learning about the Holocaust. Some examples of activities could be, the teacher will provide students in a 9^th Grade English class a check sheet that has certain facts on concentration camps e.g. were there scientific tests on Jews? Were Jews worked to death in the camps? Did the Jews have to shave their heads?  The students will be assigned to groups of three in a computer lab and will be assigned to find out the answers on the concentration camp questions they are assigned.  The students will have 30 minutes to complete their list and five minutes to present their data.  Students will tally and keep track of how many concentration camps practiced the same practices.  This assignment will be at the end of reading the book Night by Elie Wiesel. 

            With the activity the students will be able to build their knowledge on what they know about the Holocaust.  The students will have learned from the experiences which the book Night had showed them.  With the research the students will be able to build on their knowledge of other concentration camps and what the Nazi’s purposes were in the concentration camps.  The assignment will break down as follows:  3 minutes will be introduction on what the assignment requires; 25 minutes will be allotted for the research in a computer lab; 15 minutes will be given for the students will be aloud to share what each group has found and what camp had each kind of activities, also what made the specific Nazi camp unique; 10 minutes will be allotted for the teacher will show the students the tally sheet of if camps had similar cultures or if the Nazis made the Jews do certain scenarios; 5 minutes for a cool down for the students to share one new fact the student learned about concentration camps that day.

            With the research of the assignment it should incorporate the student’s ability to research and build upon their current knowledge of the Holocaust.  The students will be able to compare and contrast other concentration camps during that time. The students will be able to build their skills with recalling knowledge that they have learned during the semester about World War II and more specially the Holocaust.  With research incorporated, this is the perfect activity for 9^th graders to work together in order to discover certain facts they do not know about the Holocaust. 

            The overall objective of this cooperative learning assignment is to practice the students researching abilities, using a variety of databases.  Students in English class, as they get older, need to be to effective at doing research on certain topics for papers. With that the students will need to be able to compare and contrasts different facts while also choosing the most appropriate facts to use when making specific points.  With cooperative learning students will be able to learn news things, while learning with each other.