Cooperative Learning

This week my class began a reading unit on the children’s novel Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner. In my plans, I wanted them to cover one chapter daily. This would result in the completion of the unit within 2-3 weeks. Since this book was on a 3rd grade reading level, and I am in a 4th grade class, I felt this would be adequate time. Looking back, I definitely misread the situation!

The instructions were to introduce the book to the students, reading aloud the title and author. They would be given their chapter review, and told a few things to look for within the chapter. The review included 3-4 vocabulary words, and approximately five questions that would have them looking for main events, the order of events in the plot, and various comprehension questions. They would be partnered up, giving mixed-ability pairs, given time to ask questions, and turned loose to read!

In retrospect, one chapter daily was way too much for them. In fact, after getting about two days into the unit, they ended up covering about half of that material. This pushed the unit into a whole month, but gave them a little more time to absorb it. Previously, we had completed a whole-class unit on the book Winn-Dixie. In that first unit, the book was read to them aloud, and we covered several chapters daily. However, rather than being held accountable for independently making connections between what was asked and what was read, we held class discussions about that material. While I think having them read in pairs and discuss their “answers” before working independently helped with the actual reading of the text, I can’t say I was thrilled with how much it really helped their comprehension.

For some students, reading that novel alone would have taken twice as long. Some could have had it finished in half the time. By having the students read cooperatively, those rates were evened out a little more among the whole group. Still, for those slower readers, having someone to help read, but no one to help comprehend really put a kink in their ability to make connections to the text. Next time I do something like this, I feel it may be more beneficial to turn them loose one way or the other, consistently throughout the unit. In other words, I would have them read and work together, or read and work alone. Another solution I think may have been better for the students would have been to give them a small group (larger than pairs), or a classroom book discussion to talk with about what was read before moving on.