The purpose of this action study is to analyze the effects of cooperative learning and field trip strategy on fostering students’ skills of “the five Cs” (i.e., Communication, Collaboration, Complex problem solving, Critical thinking and Creativity). The sample of the research was a group of students from a student club of a junior high school in Nantou. The approach adopted was the Math Café Method, which is a small group work model adapted from the World Café Method by a math teacher in Taiwan. The rating scales of the five Cs were also used to analyze the impact of Math Café on building students’ key competencies of the five Cs. The findings of the research have led to the following conclusions: (1) Students with better performances show more improvement in communication skills and more willingness to collaborate with others when the teacher adopts the Math Café Method. The method can help the students quickly establish a platform for better communication to solve problems they have. However, before the communication platform is created, key competencies of underperforming students have a negative growth. (2) Key competencies of the entire group of students during field trips increase more compared to the process of tour planning. (3) Group work during the field trip results in a longer attention span of students and a great improvement in word usage. In addition, students discuss and ask questions more frequently during the process of tour planning. Moreover, it is found that students prefer this way of active teaching and learning and think their grades can be improved by applying the approach to other subjects. (4) The approach helps students with better performances make great progress in their core competencies and entire performances. Furthermore, The students take the initiative in teaching and engaging the underperforming students in the group and cooperate with their peers in order to carry out group tasks, which is the most beneficial and positive result for students.
