Today was notable in that it brings to a head the dilemmas I have been having about teaching as part of a learning team. Today I threw out the text book (with the students agreement) and took on a task which (it appeared to me) was much more useful and interesting with regard to the topic of Matter.
We decided to look at rubbish. What it is, where it comes from, where does it go, and how long it lasts. I have a number of ideas of how this will work but the main thing is to get students to be responsible for what they learn.
We will discuss what needs to be done to collect, study, analyse and dissect and then publish this information. We will start out by discussing what aspects we should cover, how we work together on this and who will do what. Danielle (another teacher) suggests we should start with an open-ended question such as:
What is the problem with rubbish?
We could mind map how we will answer it. I am not sure of the process but I think I will need to vary the methods of getting information from the class. I definitely want to start with cooperative group work and at least getting them to discuss how to listen actively, how to take turns and how to make sure everyone is involved. There should be a Science and Maths aspect to it as well as a Literacy and ITC focus.
Hmmm. Still finding hard to let go. I will begin discussion tomorrow during the double Maths lesson.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment