Cooperative Lesson Plan

With the direct instruction and inquiry lesson plans in our rear view mirror it was time for the cooperative lesson plan. It was our last chance to separate ourselves and prove ourselves. I was excited yet nervous to see how this lesson went because there were a lot of moving parts. We divided the class into groups which represented countries. We wanted these countries to trade with each other so they had enough of each supply we gave them. The countries needed at least 5 pictures of one material and at least one of every other material. Each member of the group had a different job. The jobs were data collector, trader, fact checker, and organizer. In order for each country to be successful every member had to complete their role.

The groups first had to count and see how much of each material they had. The materials were wood, medicine, metal, food, and technology. Once they counted their materials the data collector walked around to every group, and wrote down what each group had. Using this information the students traded with each other until they received the necessary number of materials. After they had what they needed they needed to glue their materials on a poster they could design, and present their posters to the rest of their class. The groups also had to create a trade log. The trade log was split into columns. The columns were the name of their country, what number of goods they started with, what they exported, what they imported, and what goods they finished with. This related the vocabulary words back to them, and made them meaningful.

I was extremely happy as to how smoothly this lesson ran. Everything went according to plan, and the class was under control. Keeping the class under control was my biggest worry coming in due to the amount of things going on during the lesson. I was happy with the work my group and I did, and was excited to get to do this as a job one day. My group definitely saved our best lesson plan for last.

Group Posters

Here is the link to the PowerPoint
Here is the link to the formal lesson plan
Here is the link to the data collector sheet
Here is the link to the trade log