Cooperative Learning in Kindergarten

I have always learned about how beneficial it is for students to work together and not just on worksheets. When I reflect back on college classes and professional development sessions, I always know I am happier and retain more when I am working with a group instead of just listening to someone speak. I have also always believed in a "noisy" classroom where students are talking, sharing, and collaborating.

However, I know that realistically it can be tricky to give students chances to experience cooperative learning in Kindergarten due to many things...time and resources usually being a big one. I usually see great examples of small group/partner work ideas and think to myself "I wish I taught an older grade so my kids could do something like this." But I have realized that my kindergartners can do WAY more then what I expect if I just give them the chance.

I have made it a goal this year to incorporate more cooperative learning opportunities during whole-instruction. I know that my students get plenty of time during guided math and reading, but I knew collaboration was lacking in other parts of our day.

Here are some snapshots of how I work in collaboration throughout the day:

(Please ignore the terrible photo quality)

Above: I like to give them marker boards and let them spread out around the room and work through a couple of math problems together. My TA and I bounce around and check in. I have them trained to grab their materials quickly and find a spot. This also works well for phonics to practice spelling words, and in writing sometimes we write sentences together. I only give them one marker and they both want to use it, so it works out well that they pass the marker back and forth and BOTH do the work. This took a little modeling, but is a great routine in our classroom now!

Above: For science, I put colored dots on their hands one day. Then I called them by color to certain spots in the classroom and gave them photos (that we laminated on colored construction paper to match their group) and had them pass around the photos and discuss what they noticed about winter. It was so funny to see how they worked...some passed around all the photos then shared at the end...some held up the photos and had a group discussion on each's photo...while others raised their hands to share. I was nervous about this but we have done this a few times and it's been great! I even had a few "behavior issues" end up in the same group...and they were fine!

Above: For a quick digraph review, I gave them word lists and had them highlight the digraphs and practice reading the words. I made sure I gave each group/partner different color markers. When I walked around, I could tell based on color who understood what digraphs were and who did not. I could hear them sounding out the words which was GREAT, and then we all read through them together. We have also done this in math with shapes and numbers. 

Hope you enjoyed reading and found something you could use in your classroom :)

Also, I'm on instagram now under GrowLittleKinderGarden follow along for more fun and sharing!