Today I lost half of my classroom to a school-wide incentive party for good attendance - a wonderful celebration that left me with a confounding problem. In preparing for instruction, I thought to myself... what on Earth can I do with half a class that will keep them cognitively engaged without leaving the rest of my class behind? It turns out that the answer could be found (as usual these days) in our iPads... but this time (also as usual these days), the answer brought with it more questions.
We were able to go about "business as usual" for the first half of class. I taught a mini-lesson on the life cycles of stars and we did a short investigation. In the second half, we addressed the issue of our missing comrades. The students became the teachers. They were to create lesson plans and prepare to instruct their classmates on today's content. To do this, my students did some "backwards mapping" -- ie, they used the Backwards Design method of looking at our goals from today, then the assessment before creating their lessons.
We first discussed as a class what possible learning goals our classmates should take away from their lessons based what we had learned today. We then collaborated to create a Google Form assessment to be administered tomorrow. Finally, the students began to design "lessons" based on these goals and assessment for their absent classmates, using the iPad's Keynote App. (Each present student was to teach a specific absent classmate. Some were in triads, but the majority was a one-to-one student-teacher partnership. I had created these partnerships prior to today's lesson based on student learning styles, needs, IEPs, etc. Some had templates with which to begin, others had checklists, a few started with nothing but their notes from the lesson.) As the children lesson planned, they determined what their classmates need to know, how to formatively assess them throughout the lesson and the best way to convey the needed information.
Next came the difficult part: Assessing my newly hatched "teachers."
I explained to the class that their final grades would be a combination of two scores:
Only tomorrow will tell if it turns out to be a "trial & error" or something else....
I welcome any ideas or suggestions for assessing future iterations of this lesson!
NOTE: A follow up to this post can be found here (posted June 3, 2011).
We were able to go about "business as usual" for the first half of class. I taught a mini-lesson on the life cycles of stars and we did a short investigation. In the second half, we addressed the issue of our missing comrades. The students became the teachers. They were to create lesson plans and prepare to instruct their classmates on today's content. To do this, my students did some "backwards mapping" -- ie, they used the Backwards Design method of looking at our goals from today, then the assessment before creating their lessons.
We first discussed as a class what possible learning goals our classmates should take away from their lessons based what we had learned today. We then collaborated to create a Google Form assessment to be administered tomorrow. Finally, the students began to design "lessons" based on these goals and assessment for their absent classmates, using the iPad's Keynote App. (Each present student was to teach a specific absent classmate. Some were in triads, but the majority was a one-to-one student-teacher partnership. I had created these partnerships prior to today's lesson based on student learning styles, needs, IEPs, etc. Some had templates with which to begin, others had checklists, a few started with nothing but their notes from the lesson.) As the children lesson planned, they determined what their classmates need to know, how to formatively assess them throughout the lesson and the best way to convey the needed information.
Next came the difficult part: Assessing my newly hatched "teachers."
I explained to the class that their final grades would be a combination of two scores:
- 67% of their final grade would come from their Keynote presentation.
- The remaining 33% contributing to their final grade would be whatever score their "student" earned on tomorrow's test.
Only tomorrow will tell if it turns out to be a "trial & error" or something else....
I welcome any ideas or suggestions for assessing future iterations of this lesson!
NOTE: A follow up to this post can be found here (posted June 3, 2011).
You have read this article Classroom Management /
Google /
Google Tools /
Keynote
with the title May 2011. You can bookmark this page URL https://fieldecho.blogspot.com/2011/05/teaching-to-half-class-and-coming-out.html. Thanks!
