Co-operative learning is the most demanding form of group work for a language teacher to organize. It means first having an inquiry based group work followed by mixing the groups. The project requires a lot of pre-planning.

Trust me. When you have done it once, it is ok. Just a little more planning and organizing. Besides you do not need to go through all three stages and may well cut the lesson after Stage 2. It all depends on the abilities of the class and the time available.

Due to the complicated nature of this method I will be using 11 photos taken from a power point lesson plan to demonstrate the whole process.

The final communicative purpose is to present a plan in order to establish a zoo in the students’ home community.

Stage 3 means going back to the home group to explain the others if you learnt anything new during the presentations in Letter groups.

There are many ways to proceed in Stage 3: the most demanding one is to start working on the final plans for the zoo animal section that was the topic for Home group. The next lesson would then mean presenting, discussing and evaluating the plans.

Stage 4, giving feedback on the project itself, the work of oneself and others can take place right after Stage 3 or at the end of the next lesson.

Co-operative teaching is an excellent way to move on from ordinary group work to something that resembles a real-life problem and is fascinating in many other ways too, learning of English being a natural by-product.