Cooperative Learning

I used cooperative learning this past Friday. The accounting students in my clinical teaching experience give little effort, copy off their neighbors, turn in incomplete (or no) work but then seemed shocked when they learned their grades for the first nine weeks. I attempted to take advantage of their state of "shock" to teach them to improve their level of effort.
After completing the bell ringer, I asked students to look over their work from the previous chapter and identify the mistakes they made. I then went over some common errors and pointed out these errors could have been prevented by better time management, using me as a resource for questions, not rushing, not copying from their neighbors incorrect work & checking their calculations. I then divided the class into groups and asked them to go to a website containing a blog about accounting errors at Overstock.com. I asked the groups to work together to determine the amount of money lost by Overstock.com due to accounting errors ($265M). I then assigned each group a perspective (Accountants, Investors, Other Employees, Government, Consumers) and asked them to list the ways their group of people would be affected by losses at Overstock.com. This was followed by a class disscussion and summarized by tips for accounting success which I presented on PowerPoint. I feel this was one of my better lessons thus far because it met an important CSO (relating accounting to the economy). In addition, I was attempting to be a responsive teacher by providing feedback in a way that responded to each learner's specific needs. I did this using the Marzano teaching strategy of Cooperative Learning.