Bingo! Lecture Bingo!
One of the things I want to see this blog grow into is a journal and sharing space as a teacher of things that have worked for me. The education industry calls it all sorts of names, most familiarily, "Teaching/Learning Strategies".
Now, a really good thing about the school that I teach in, is that it is experimental and very willing to allow teacher-level action research in trying 'new' teaching strategies in the classroom. 'New' because for some in this little island, they may never have had the privilege or opportunity to try them. But they may not be all that new globally. In that respect, the things I have learnt on campus in the last year have been of some good to me.
Week 4 and I have been able to try at least one strategy a week, if not across levels, in all the classes I teach. To be honest, I'm still not sure how much 'teaching' I've done that has been 'learnt'. I think I have been doing a lot of learning-based activities, but I can't be guaranteed how much learning went in.
I mean to say in this post that Lecture Bingo was one of my successes this week. Unlike most of the other lessons (activity-based), I had to teach my class of middle-of-the-road 9th-graders a variety of persuasive devices for use in expository texts. I couldn't trust them to review the notes on their own like I did for a high-ability class, so I had to present it to them.
This was going to prove difficult because they are a chatty and not-highly-motivated lot. The incentive, I had hoped, is that this term's teaching and learning assessments will be equally distributed through a comprehension test (BO-ring!), a written expository piece (BOR-ing!) and through intra & inter-class debates across the level (A-HA!) So, it would be good for them to be familiar with oratory skills.
So off we go, I prepared my slides, then I prepared a vareity of grid sheets with different permutations of keyword placements, all carefully deviced so that only ONE sheet would get four-in-a-row. I can't believe how into it the kids got! Their attention was on the screen and at least reading as I spoke, crossing out the keywords that I highlighted to them during the course of the lesson. You could hear how eager they were, "I only need one more! and I've got three chances! Shhhush! Let's go on!"
I'm still on sure if or how they internalized learning but it works to keep their attention on the presentation!
Now, a really good thing about the school that I teach in, is that it is experimental and very willing to allow teacher-level action research in trying 'new' teaching strategies in the classroom. 'New' because for some in this little island, they may never have had the privilege or opportunity to try them. But they may not be all that new globally. In that respect, the things I have learnt on campus in the last year have been of some good to me.
Week 4 and I have been able to try at least one strategy a week, if not across levels, in all the classes I teach. To be honest, I'm still not sure how much 'teaching' I've done that has been 'learnt'. I think I have been doing a lot of learning-based activities, but I can't be guaranteed how much learning went in.
I mean to say in this post that Lecture Bingo was one of my successes this week. Unlike most of the other lessons (activity-based), I had to teach my class of middle-of-the-road 9th-graders a variety of persuasive devices for use in expository texts. I couldn't trust them to review the notes on their own like I did for a high-ability class, so I had to present it to them.
This was going to prove difficult because they are a chatty and not-highly-motivated lot. The incentive, I had hoped, is that this term's teaching and learning assessments will be equally distributed through a comprehension test (BO-ring!), a written expository piece (BOR-ing!) and through intra & inter-class debates across the level (A-HA!) So, it would be good for them to be familiar with oratory skills.
So off we go, I prepared my slides, then I prepared a vareity of grid sheets with different permutations of keyword placements, all carefully deviced so that only ONE sheet would get four-in-a-row. I can't believe how into it the kids got! Their attention was on the screen and at least reading as I spoke, crossing out the keywords that I highlighted to them during the course of the lesson. You could hear how eager they were, "I only need one more! and I've got three chances! Shhhush! Let's go on!"
I'm still on sure if or how they internalized learning but it works to keep their attention on the presentation!
posted by The Chilibuddy @ 10:56 pm ::
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