Tuesday 28 May 2013

Life is about choices..



Life is all about choices but what choices did my S2 class make when asked to teach themselves Speed, Distance and Time. In my last blog before I choose to try and change inservice days I had been inspired by a great TED talk about children learning for themselves. It did occur in a different world but I took the basic idea and decided to run with it. It was awesome and they really enjoyed teaching, testing and helping each other. All I said was 'you will have two classes to prepare a 15 minute lesson on Speed, Distance and Time'. It was not the over arching question I was looking for but it did the job. I placed iPads, the Smartboard, graphic calculators, mini whiteboards and various arts and crafts at their disposal and off they went. I learned a very valuable lesson here and that was that the iPad 1 does not support mirroring though some Apps like keynote do. That means that wou cannot project whats on the screen of the iPad 1 through a projector which was a pain but we worked around it. They all wrote up lesson plans and each and very group produced a great lesson. One group sang the Roscoe H Spellgood SDT song and it was class. It was funny as well and I will enjoy showing that at their S6 graduation! A good few groups used Keynote to deliver their main points but none read directly off the screen. They also used mini whiteboards and did some fantastic formative assessment. One group used Prezi and created a really simple but effective lesson. 

I tested them on SDT a few days later and all of the class passed with flying colours. The next lesson I was absent due to development work on Lifeskills Mathematics 3 but decided to continue the trend of Peer teaching. I made up some notebook slides exactly like I would if I was taking the lesson and designated different roles to different students. One young lady took the class through the starter questions using the quadruple chocolate cookie pot to pick names at random, another took them through our daily logic puzzles and one more did the learning intention and success criteria. They then sat down and learnt how to graph equations and solve simultaneous equations graphically! It was brilliant, the classroom was there own, they helped each other, moved around and did not stop till everyone in the room got the hang of it. I did come in at one point to see 4 boys in green fluorescent football bibs but they said this helped with their designated roles and inspired creativity! One cannot get in the way of creativity.

This week they are working on presentations of famous mathematicians and again technology will be used. I am really excited because two groups have decided to make 'Word Art' Videos where they draw and do a voice over. It was inspired by a great Fibonacci video that a lady called ViHart produced. Presentations start tomorrow so I will let you know how they get on. Life is all about choices and so far everyone seems to be making the right ones.

As always onwards and upwards..

1 comment:

  1. Hello from Newhailes! I'm trying to invite you and the beautiful lady from B to my birthday party but could not, as our Polish friend suggested, find you on Facebook! Could you send an email to seraphicsingles@yahoo.com?

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