Cooperative learning is pretty big in our district. The kids do presentations and we have an oral language grade in our report card and that is pretty important. They use the information they have and do a presentation in front of the whole class. They do overhead slides, and draw diagrams on the board labeling everything. I have told them I will be checking on how much information they have gathered on, for example, photosynthesis.
Every single student has something to offer.
As a teacher its my job to find out what that thing is and to pull it out. One of our lessons had to do with ancient Egypt. So I had one group working on Pharaoh's court, another on how they would do things in the market place, another on what they believe about afterlife and a fourth group was working on gods and goddesses in ancient Egypt. The first step is for them to get together as a group and isolate information they find interesting. The second step was to get them to go to the library and get Egyptian music.