Did You Know…

Kagan breaks the Replacement Cycle, where initiatives are constantly being replaced by the latest thing.

Learn it once, use it for a lifetime!

  • “When teachers are effective in structuring group membership and tasks, and in training students in collaborative skills, the evidence shows positive gains in academic, social and attitudinal outcomes”

    -Quality Teaching for Diverse Learners in Schooling, BES., p.64

  • “As a Beginning Teacher, I have found the Kagan Cooperative Learning structures and strategies invaluable. Kagan was an integral part of my classroom set up and gave me the skills to manage behaviour positively. The children want to learn because they find class fun and exciting. The detailed and step by step training gave me the confidence to teach in all areas cooperatively. ”

    — LEONIE M., PCT, AUCKLAND

  • “…they need to be teaching this at teacher training as it makes everything so easy...”

    -B. Jones, Music Teacher, Manawatu

  • “Teaching includes specific training in collaborative group work...and students demonstrate effective co-operative and social skills that enable group processes to facilitate learning for all participants.”

    — Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling, BES., Appendix D

  • “Kagan really came out positively in the IEPs we just did, because our non-verbal ORS funded children had made such gains.”

    -T. Mackay, DP, Auckland

  • "Pedagogies built on these concepts are collaborative and reciprocal. Māori students benefit from a cooperative learning environment, and being able to discuss things with their peers in smaller groups facilitates Māori students’ learning"

    https://theeducationhub.org.nz/seven-principles-to-effectively-support-maori-students-as-maori/

Kagan is Adaptive

Kagan Structures are content-free & simply facilitate & regulate student interactions with each other & the content, so teachers choose the topic, task, level of engagement & complexity, timings...

Consider this…

Call on One as an instructional strategy is highly adaptive. Teachers have been using this worldwide for centuries. They can use with any age group, curriculum area, context or level. We acquaint this strategy with teaching, as in this is how teachers teach. Generally speaking.

Well Kagan is highly adaptive as well. Our cooperative learning structures have no content. They are simple a set of repeatable steps to regulate and facilitate student interactions.

Kagan has over 250 structures which cover a range of functions and group size. But for this explanation, let’s look at one of most basic pair structures, RallyRobin, where students make a verbal list with a partner, each taking turns.

Here are some examples of how this could be used across the curriculum and with different levels:

  • NE/Year 1 - skip counting x 1 backwards and forwards from 20; list the alphabet

  • Year 2 - skip counting in 2s or 3s; words that end in -ing

  • Year 3 - list adjectives to describe a story character; verbs and adverbs

  • Year 4 - list playground rules; list emotions

  • Year 5 - list social skills for working in a team, or being a leader

  • Year 6 - list items to bring for EOTC, or safety practices near water

  • Year 7 - list benefits of exercise or skills for a particular sport

  • Year 8 - listing the self-management skills they will need for secondary school

  • Year 9 - list the Periodic Table; tools in the woodwork workshop

  • Year 10 - list Māori leaders; ways to make a number using decimals or fractions

  • Year 11 - list muscle groups and functions; use technical vocabulary to describe an artist and their work

  • Year 12 - list metaphors and similes in a passage; scientific terms for parts of the body

  • Year 13 - list similarities/differences between two characters; historic places in their community

Now let’s look at a written structure - AllRecord RoundRobin, where one student says an idea and they all write it down, then the next student says one, all record, and so on. This is done in teams (maximum 5 students).

Look at the list above - could this structure be used with the same content as RallyRobin? Absolutely! Same content, two different structures, verbal and written, different student groupings, different social and academic skills required - highly adaptive!

(Admittedly AllRecord RoundRobin would be a difficult one for NE/Year 1, but we do need them to be able to write numbers and letters, so we’d advise doing this in pairs (BothRecord RallyRobin) with a cheat sheet on the table for them to refer to.)

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. These could be used at the beginning, through or end of a learning session - as a warm up, brainstorm, processing, or review etc. As the teacher, you get to decide on the content or topic, task (which Structure), level of engagement & complexity, and timings or how long.

This is a very simplistic explanation and if you’d like to know more about the adaptability of Kagan, please feel free to contact us.