Thea Durling

Our Towns: a Cooperative Learning Project Thea Durling

Our Towns is both a guide and a guideline for teachers who wish to try out cooperative learning. The book presents a multidisciplinary project that integrates math, science, language arts, and social studies, along with the English Language Teaching components (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). In the Our Towns project, students are divided into small groups. Each group is given the description of a "town"; this town becomes the focus of the project. Throughout the Our Towns project, different events happen to the town, such as a natural disaster. Students use information from various sources to respond to the events from the perspective of their community. Our Towns is a highly adaptable project. For example, while originally designed for use with adult English as a Second Language learners, it can be used with middle or high school students as well. Also, the extension activities included offer additional multidisciplinary integration. The project, as presented here, is a minimum of 16 hours of class time. Teachers can use only parts of the project, such as a given lesson, for a shorter project. Also, they can expand the project time by incorporating more in-class research and reflection. This a teacher-tested project that has great results. It gets students involved, working together, and thinking about important realities of daily life as they affect towns and communities.