ABSTRACT
The study investigated the impact of cooperative leaning strategy on performance and retention in geometry among junior secondary school students in Sokoto state, Nigeria. The purpose was to investigate whether or not CLS enhances the performance and retention ability of students in geometry construction of JSS III as against the use of CLM. The study indicates that students? performance in geometry construction is very poor. It also established that using CLS improved performance and retention ability of students in geometry construction. The design of the study was quasi experimental control group design such as: pretest, posttest and post posttest design. 10,103 students formed the population of the study; purposive sampling procedure was used to select 354 students from the study area. GCPT was administered before and after the treatment. Four research questions were asked from which four null hypotheses were developed and tested at 0.05 level of confidence. Independent t-test was used to analyze each hypothesis appropriately. CLS was used to teach experimental group in geometry construction of JSS III while CLM was used to teach control group the same topics. The analysis of the data indicated that students taught with CLS performed and retained significantly higher than students taught with CLM. Male students taught with CLS performed better than the male students taught with CLM. The study found no significant deference between male and female students taught with CLS. Female exposed to CLS did not perform better than the Female exposed to CLM. Female students exposed to CLS did not perform better than female taught with CLM. On the basis of these findings, the study concluded that CLS improved students? performance and retention in geometry construction of JSS III. The study therefore, recommends that CLS should be adopted in the teaching and learning of mathematics in general and geometry construction in particular