Marzano's Belief in Cooperative Learning

Three years ago, while working on my Master's degree, I did my first classroom action research on cooperative learning. As an English teacher, motivating and engaging different readers is crucial, especially with novel units. I have found literature circles to be an effective model to engage students, as the discussions are "student-centered". Although I have selected the groups, and arranged high, middle, and low-level students, I know literature circles enhances learning for all abilities. By having students apply different reading roles such as questioner, summarizer, connector, visualizer, clarifier, predictor, etc, all of these various tasks make the reader think differently. When all members in a group have different roles, they have various angles to bring to the table. Last month in December, I had my Juniors spend two weeks reading Mitch Albom's novel, Tuesdays with Morrie. The cooperative learning activity allowed students to hear other points of view, to think about the text using different active reading roles, develop and create student-led conversations, and learn more importantly about each other and the life lessons Morrie teaches to Mitch and his audience. When I had students reflect on the process, the majority enjoyed this cooperative learning model, and would like to do more novels using this framework.

I would recommend Harvey Daniels book on Literature Circles.