Kagan Cooperative Learning in the SLP's Classroom

Last week (or was that 2 weeks ago...summer brain!), I went to a Kagan training offered through my district. I absolutely loved it!

Do you ever find yourself in this scenario:

You have 5-6 students in a group and you're playing some sort of game. You are collecting data with each student's turn, but at the end of 30 minutes you only have 6 data points/student! That's not enough to get a true picture of how the student is progressing with his/her goals!

Kagan Cooperative Learning solves this problem!!!!

How??

If you have four students, assign each one a shoulder partner (person sitting next to them) so that you have two groups of two. If you have five students, have a trio and a 2-person group. If you have six students, arrange them in three groups of two. Each person is also assigned A or B in each group. You may want to label their seats: 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc. They also have some neat mats shown here:

This works best with 4 desks pushed together.



I have a kidney table, so that arrangement doesn't quite work for me.

Anyway, for each question during a game, you can have the students do Timed-Pair-Share. This structure works best for open-ended questions (e.g. "What was your favorite part of the story?"). They get with their shoulder partner and you say, "A's are going first. You will have 30 seconds (or whatever time works for you) to share your answer. B's can only listen and ask A's questions during this time. When the 30 seconds is up, B's will respond with their answer. A's may only listen and ask questions at this time."


Another structure, Rally Robin, is perfect for list responses (e.g. "Name as many pets as you can."). Students get with their partners and you say, "B's are going first. B's will name one item and then A's will name another item. You will keep taking turns until I call time."

The wonderful thing about Kagan structures is that students are engaged. There is no hiding! Students must participate! There is more opportunity for data collection! I can't wait to try it this fall!

I will post more about this soon but I just wanted to give you a couple ideas to use when your school year starts!