Team Cooperation Goals are a set of cooperative behavior standards teachers explicitly teach, practice and reinforce in their classrooms for effective cooperative learning or team work. The standards, originally established by researchers Dr. Nancy Madden and Dr. Robert Salvin typically consist of five behaviors- Practice Active Listening, Help & Encourage Each Other, Everyone Participates, Explain Your Ideas & Tell Why, and Complete Tasks. Team Cooperation Goals are an essential component of cooperative learning.
Tips & Tricks
- One at a Time: Introduce the standards one at a time. Explicitly teach and practice each behavior until it is routine. Don’t assume the students know how to do the behaviors, model, practice and discuss the behaviors and return to them often. Students may even need a visual reminder with pictures and/or sentence starters.
- Looks Like/Sounds Like Chart: Use a Looks Like/Sounds Like Anchor chart to establish and remind students of the behaviors associated with each standard. Collaborate to come up with a list of specific look-fors and listen-fors (looks like /sounds like) for each of the behavior standards. List everything from student body posture to appropriate language. Refer to the chart when re-introducing or rewarding students for displaying the behaviors.
- Specific Praise: When rewarding student teams for displaying correct behaviors use the specific language associated with the standard. You may says something like, “Anita’s team earns a point because all the members of her team are actively participating.” You can also use specific praise around a behavior or look-for within the standard such as, “Aaron’s team earns a point because all the members of his team have their eyes on the speaker. I know they are practicing active listening, because they have their eyes on the speaker.”
- Team Score Sheet: Students of all ages respond to fun, engaging competition. As you reward points to students for displaying the cooperative learning standards, have them keep track on a team score sheet and track the teams’ progress visually in the room. Don’t forget to establish a competition end date, and celebrate teams who earned the highest score.
Tools & Templates
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