Learning to Learn Cooperatively

This article gave me a great insight on how Cooperative Learning can be a recipe for success when teaching.
The way I see this article is a set of instructions for preaparing a particular dish, including a list of the ingredients required.
Our dish here is  the learning of our students, is when we see the results.
Our ingredient list is:
- make the students aware of the purpose and benefits of learning cooperatively;
- practice cooperation skills with nonacademic games;
- change the culture of our classroom;
- establish ground rules for all cooperative learning activities;
- balance students status;
- assign roles;
- provide demanding tasks.
As in all recipes the right ingredients are very important but the detailed information about how it should be done is what determines the final result. We teachers play a crucial part when we follow the instructions, we have to be able to recognize cultural and individual differences in order to manage the needs of our students. It is important to balance situations and not make assumptions. We want to make use of cooperative learning to create a rich environment for our students to learn language and at he same time develop their capacity for collaborative twenty-first-century communication and problem solving.
We can get our perfect dish! By doing so we gain happiness and satisfaction.