EPL day 9 and I have taught 5 classes - all going well.
I have been working on making my classes more student centred (within the limits of the school's resources) than they would normally be. To this end what I have been trying is asking a student to go through a problem on the whiteboard (I have been teaching Y10 Science, Y11 Physics & Y12 Physics). The results were very encouraging in that while a student was doing something on the whiteboard the rest of the class was fully engaged. It was interesting to me that there was nothing high-tech needed to do this.
I started off asking for volunteers and it was usually the smartest or most outgoing students who would volunteer. My MT recommended that I should not ask for volunteers but rather choose a student. I tried this and it worked even better because it was much quicker and it wasn't hard to get several different student to do things in in a series of problems. My MT said I should try choosing the student who was paying least attention. I try it and it worked very well. It certainly got the least engaged student fully engaged and the rest of the class were fully paying attention too. Sometimes the student won't know what to do in which case I say, "you can ask the audience". The result has been that the rest of the class is eger to help. Having all the students concentrating 100% on the work is an amazing thing.
An interesting development was when a student whom I chose to do a problem on the whiteboard copied my presentation style in that without prompting he asked an other student "in the audience" to do the calculations.
These techniques appear to yield very promising results.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Hi Murray,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds rather promising.
I did my first Yr 8 maths lesson last week and it went mostly according to plan. There was one moment I deviated from the plan by asking a student, chosen at random, to write an answer on the white board. He had almost illegible white board writing. I didn't chance a second student. But I will find out from my MT who can write on the board and they will be chosen at "random" next time.
I have also noticed how instructing the students to copy information from a white board, written or projected, quietens them down. Once they have finished the copying, even if it takes only a minute, they are focused on the lesson again.
Cheers
Gary
Secondary, Maths, Science, Physics
Hi Gary,
ReplyDeleteI have had a student I picked write illegibly but all I did was ask him to write big enought and clear enough for everyone at the back to be able to read, and he did. I have noted that copying down information from the white board also works reasonably well. When you had a student writing on the white board, what were the rest of the class behaving like?