Upcoming – Feb 26 – Joël Laurier – Cooperative Learning: a teaching strategy and a learner’s tool

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Date and Time: Sunday, 26 February 2017– 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Speaker: Joël Laurier
Location: AIINA Rm 602 (map https://goo.gl/maps/kEQo5UV2jPr)
Fee for JALT members: Free
Fee for one-day members: 1,000 yen (500 yen for students)

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Administrators want improved student performance; parents want improved social skills instilled in their children; teachers want better performing students that are more autonomous; and students want to show everyone what they can do. But in this world of budgets over educational outcomes, standardized tests, and constant academic competition, teachers are faced with numerous constraints that make most of the above desires unattainable. But are they really?

As more and more research is being conducted on multiple intelligences and effective group work, Cooperative Learning (CL) has proven itself as an effective teaching approach that involves students using social skills in interdependent groupings, and achieving better results.  The classroom then becomes an interactive stage for students to learn and use social skills while demonstrating more meaningful learning.

This hands-on workshop is aimed at teachers of all academic levels, and will benefit who have varying levels of students in their class. It will show attendees how they can use CL to increase active participation between students while instilling a positive learning environment that leads to better achievement results. Attendees will be shown effective CL structures that make learning the student’s responsibility, and leave the teacher ’s concern.

Joël Laurier teaches in the Leaning English for Academic Purposes (LEAP) program at Toyo University. He is a two time Kagan Academy Cooperative Learning Scholarship winner. His research interests include cooperative learning, language policy and bilingualism.