Cooperative interaction increases learning and improves social skills. However, sociologists have found that when students perform a groupwork task, they prejudge what their peers will be able to contribute on the basis of perceived academic ability and peer status. It is a classical example of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. All students can learn. Championed by educational theorist Jerome Bruner, the spiral curriculum is the belief that all students can learn if a teacher shows them how to think and discover knowledge for themselves.
Students view, touch, interpret, and act out historic images projected as slides.
As the teacher asks a series of inquiry questions, students record the information in a unique notetaking style. This strategy brings to life key historical concepts so that students physically and emotionally experience them. Teachers re-create moments in history, such as the horrors of fighting trench warfare and the monotony of life on the assembly line, so that students can more meaningfully understand the drama of the past. Rich historical resources, not staid worksheets, fuel this approach. This approach creates rich class discussions involving all students on such controversial topics as the Boston Massacre and Japanese-American internment.