So this is a post that talks about some of the things I have been thinking about over the last month. Probably the most enlightening thing to happen this term has been the Presentation I went to by Andrew Douch who is a leader in innovative teaching practices and creating online resources. Check out his website by clicking on his name. I have been following Andrew for a while but I felt at my old school that creating online resources would not be as useful because the students had virtually no access to computers in the classroom. Due to the fact that at JMSS we have a one to one tablet program, I feel like I can finally do all those things that I ever wanted to in terms of ICT. The fact that we are working in a team teaching, open plan learning space also means that it is even more important to steer away from chalk and talk and to use the classroom times for interaction and creativity and communication.
So I started creating online video-tutorials in order to start taking some of the content out of the classroom and in to the students homework or down time. The Andrew Douch presentation was really just in time for me because it helped to give me a context to what I was doing and to focus in on not only what I wanted to get out of the project but also what was possible to get out of the project. It made me think more critically about how I want the pedagogy of my english classes to run and has really set the agenda for me in terms of future directions for English at this school.
Here is what I'm thinking:
- All the content based "chalk and talk stuff" will now be turned in to video tutorial podcasts to be posted online. This includes topics like "annotating news articles" "how to write a language analysis essay" "writing persuasively" etc.
I have already created 5 different tutorials.
- Students will be expected to watch these tutorials as "pre-learning" ie, before they come to class.
- Classes will be spent with interactive activities, communication, group work, presentations, and creative pursuits - things that students can't do on their own.
- We are also building in more opportunities for one on one conferencing - where students get to bring in what they are working on and get their teacher's help and advice.
- We are also working on creating workshops that students can withdraw in to during work time if they need extra help with certain elements of the content.
All of these strategies will help students to work at their own pace, watch and rewatch presentations if they need to (saving you from answering the same questions over and over from students who were not listening), interact with each other and the teacher in a way that best suits them, ask more questions, get more individual time with the teacher, and be more responsible for their own learning. It also claims back the classroom from the content a bit too.
Of course the downside is that these tutorials take time to create but with any basic screen capture software and good content, the payoff is that you create it once and it is there for years. Each year we can build on the information that is there, rather than recreating the wheel or repeating the same information time and time again. As the years go on, students have a solid bank of tutorials to draw from, something that helps them get the extra reinforcement that they need from their learning experiences.
The beauty of this also is that you know that each teacher is contributing to the creation of resources and that despite who their classroom teacher is, the students all have access to the very best lessons and advice from ALL of the English teachers at the school, something that you cannot say in most places.
It will take away any element of competition from between teachers and classrooms because everyone is working for the good of the whole cohort and not their individual class.
So that is my utopian classroom vision for English at JMSS. I feel that although there is still much to be done, we are well on our way to creating a dynamic, interesting and relevant curriculum that engages kids and meets their needs when and where they need them. Now, back to it!
No comments:
Post a Comment