Cooperative Learning Lesson Plan – Teams-Tournaments-Games (TGT)

Kylie Mirjanian

EDU 220 – Educational Psychology

Professor Dr. Isbell

April 2018
Cooperative Learning Lesson Plan

I. Describe the Class

1) 3rd grade class, 20 students total

2) 3 ESL students, 2 learning disabled

3) Class lay out: Students in groups of 5 students, groups assigned to a table.

II. Subject/Skill:

1) Science experiments, with poster board to present results. Students will use

cooperative learning technique of teams-games-tournaments (TGT)

III. Objectives

1) Students will be able to cooperate and work together to complete the experiment

2) Students will be able to work together to write results on poster board

3) Students will be able to explain their results to teacher when asked

4) Students will show group effort and cooperate with other team members to

complete the assignment.

IV. Procedures

1) Before recess is over, have poster boards and experiment materials laid out on the

tables, each table with the same experiment. Assign students to a table so that

there is a strong motivator at each table and split up the slower learners.

2) As students enter the classroom, give them their seat assignments and explain

what they will be doing.

3) “All right class, everyone take a seat and, at your table, you will see all of your

materials. This week in science, we learned about fulcrums and levers and how a

force applied to the end of a longer lever increases the amount of force we apply.

We are going to test the things we learned by creating our own levers and trying

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Cooperative Learning Lesson Plan

to launch our pennies and buttons as far as we can across the table. We are going

to work together to do this experiment. We need everyone to help create the

levers, and I’m going to show you how, and then everyone is going to have a turn

working the levers and, finally, everyone is going to contribute a picture or

explanation for why the experiment worked like it did. We are going to put those

explanations and pictures together on our poster boards so the whole class can see

what we did.”

4) Demonstrate on my own desk how to create a lever with the materials given and

show different ways that they can do it, giving them a choice of how big their

levers can be, whether the levers are on the end of the table or more in the middle,

and letting them choose whether they want to use buttons or pennies.

5) Allow them to return to their respective tables and work together to create the

levers, with added direction if necessary

6) Ensure that, once the experiment begins, all pennies and buttons remain on the

table and no one is throwing them too hard.

7) Have them measure the distance that the pennies were thrown by the different

levers with the same amount of force.

8) Have them complete the experiment with both levers multiple times and average

the distances, so their measurements are more correct.

9) Finally, they should create their own representation of the experiment on a piece

of paper that they can glue to the poster where they will be able to show the class

what they did.

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Cooperative Learning Lesson Plan

V. Materials

1) Poster board, 8 fat markers (2 per table), masking tape, 8 rulers (2 per table), a

handful of buttons/pennies for each table, pieces of paper and pencils for drawing.

VI. Grouping Structures

1) There are 5 children per table, with 4 tables total.

VII. Modifications

1) For the students that need extra help, they are paired with the stronger learners in

the class so that they will be assisted through the experiment but still able to learn

and move forward with the cooperative learning activity.

VIII. Assessment

1) The activity will end with the students explaining (either to me or the class) what

happened with their levers and pennies and why it happened. I will quiz the

individual groups verbally on the scientific names of the things they created and

the results of their experiments.

IX. Closure

1) I will go over how everyone did and congratulate on the teamwork that was used

to implement the experiments.

2) “Well done class! Everyone did very well on creating their levers and tested them

out. Your pictures and explanations were perfect and you did well putting

everything together on your poster board. We learned about fulcrums and levers

and force earlier this week. Does it make more sense now, after we did the

experiment? Ok good. Does anyone have any questions or comments about the

project? This kind of stuff is applied in other types of life too. If you are ever

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Cooperative Learning Lesson Plan

helping your parents build something and you have to tighten a screw, the longer

the lever is, the easier it is to tighten it. Or if you guys have ever been on a teeter

totter, if the teeter totter is really long, you can see how it is much easier to push

off the ground and jump into the air. This is the same idea that we learned about

today. Good job guys. Let’s clean up our tables!”

Resources:

https://www.education.com/activity/article/make-science-fun-launch-pennies/