Cooperative Learning

I have located four basic tenets for cooperative learning. Let's find out if I understand what I am trying to teach my students... I have never had any training myself in how to use cooperative groups and I am not happy with just putting students into a foursome and saying work together; it has not been as productive as I would like. I would appreciate any help that I can get from the education community.

1. Students must be trained for cooperative learning to work.
But, so must teachers and that is what I am looking for. Training for students does not stop at the "Here's your group. Here's your task; get it done," philosophy that seems to be the norm. I need to teach my students how to respond to each other, how to encourage each other, and how to help the reluctant student participate. How do I do that? Where can I develop these skills so that I can help my students?

2. Cooperative learning activities must require participation of all members in the group in order to accomplish the task.
Here is the biggest area of teacher responsibility. Planning must be so detailed that problems are anticipated and prevented. That should ensure that all students are able to participate and even want to participate. Yet, it doesn't fall only on the teacher. Students must be trained to accept responsibility for their level of participation.

3. Students must be monitored to ensure equal access to participation.
Upon first reading this, I assumed that the teacher would be doing all of the monitoring. Yet, the more I think about it, the more I realize that is only part of it. I have to teach students to monitor their own progress, the group to monitor group progress and ability to stay on task, and then, I monitor each group, offer encouragement, and let the class know when a group or individual is participating above expectations. In addition, I have to monitor progress as a class for meeting deadlines. I am working on teaching students to monitor their level of participation as individuals right now. This can be done even if they are working independently, away from a group.

4. Students must know what is expected of them.
While this seems obviously, my students and I have been talking about this one the most. It is closely tied to #2. Without exceptional planning, students may not know what is expected of them. And, depending on the task at hand, the expectations may be different. Each task must have its own set of rules, underneath the expectations of cooperative learning. My students grasp that concept. Where we fall short is in student responsibility again. How do I teach students to take responsibility for their choices? When do they start asking for help or clarification if they don't understand what is expected of them?

Once again, I am asking for help. Please clarify any misconceptions that I may have about cooperative learning. Offer suggestions to help me solve my problems. Provide me websites that will help me plan better, offer good cooperative learning tasks to train my students with, and just talk to me. I hope for this site to become a powerful learning tool for myself. If I'm learning, my students are improving.