Team Teaching

I have been team teaching with an older, more experienced colleague on the Much Ado About Nothing and I have really enjoyed it.  I think it's hard to genuinely team teach but we have done all the planning together and split the preparation and while I lead class discussion, my colleague can make comments or take the discussion in new ways at any time.  Plus, we both have been flexible in adapting what we are doing based on how the class pans out.  It has made me realise what I miss in teaching in a small school where teachers teach all of one grade - the synergy of talking through and reflecting on teaching.  It's a strength to have a team (or pair) of teachers teaching the same unit.

Audio

So, I decided that the class reading of Much Ado About Nothing was doing nothing for us as a class.  I investigated some audio versions that we could listen to and not have to try and figure out meaning as we read but listen to an interpretation and try and figure it out.  There's a difference in my head, not sure it sounds that way on "paper"!  (I guess that might be an idiom we have to explain in a historical context one day!).  I really wanted to find the free version of the Shakespeare's Globe play that the UK government made available but it is no longer available (boo).  There were two choices and I listened to the samples.  I did not like the voice of one's Benedick and the other was the BBC Radio version with David Tennant.  I downloaded it then realised as I was looking for the start of Act 2 (we did a good job of understanding Act 1 so didn't want to redo it) before class realised it had a Northern accent and a Scottish accent.  I didn't really think about it before, so hope my class will be able to understand - they enunciate clearly but I know the accents!

Who Wants to be a Millionaire

I watched Slumdog Millionaire for the first time on Monday and I loved the idea behind it of how the answers to the questions reveal the character's life and the complexities of India in a creative way.
So, perhaps rather ambitiously, I decided we would try it as a class in our writing lesson today.  I have been playing around with how to do it most of this week and I finally settled on showing them a clip from the original show, then a clip from Slumdog to explain the premise, then gave them examples of questions and answers.  I thought thinking up questions would be too difficult and as that was not the purpose of the exercise, thought it better to provide some ideas although they were free to change/modify/create new ones. Then I asked them to think about how they could create stories from the question/answer.
I'm not sure how well it really worked - it seemed to be a bigger leap than I thought for them.  I still think the idea has potential but maybe I need to scaffold it differently.

Stream of Consciousness

I used an idea taken from an "ancient" book called Poetry in the Classroom (Mallick and Jenkins, 1983) that a colleague had left behind when she moved back to Australia.  The chapter was called 'What Happens When We Read a Poem' and it modelled a response to a poem by Sylvia Plath by showing the stream of conscious thought prompted by the poem and associations (and random thoughts that pop into your head for no reason!).  I thought it was a great way to show how analysis is really a series of engagements with the poem, that we all can do it, and that it takes a few readings of the poem to start to think deeper about what the poet is saying.
I photocopied the example in the book (although realised we did not need all 4 pages!!) and asked the class to individually pick one of four poems from the IGCSE anthology we are using.  Then (using the phonic phones again!) they read through the poem and noted thoughts and ideas as they thought of them repeatedly.  I was modelling for them - I use the computer and projector to do this so they can ask as I write and I can point out things I may have forgotten to mention until I do them - and when I could sense (after about an hour) they were reaching their limit I said they could wrap it up but I was so engrossed in what I was doing I had to tear myself away!!
As we had a bit of time left - double block today - I suggested they get into groups based on the poem they did and discuss some of the ideas they had and questions they still had.  This was interesting, and once again, we were all reminded how our responses are often personal and so varied.

Pipe Phones

I wanted my students to listen to the poem we were looking at today so I borrowed the pipe phones from Elementary and asked them to read the poems into them.  They absolutely loved this "low-tech" device and it met the purpose beautifully or reading the poem to themselves without being unbearably noisy or conscious of each other reading.  Some asked to keep it!
We then randomly formed groups of 4 and talked through the poem before coming back together as a large group and sharing different thoughts and ideas while one of the student recorded what we said on a document projected on the screen.
A good lesson.

Mrs. Pratchett

If you have ever read Boy by Roald Dahl, I'm sure you will remember Mrs. Pratchett the sweet-shop owner.  I love the visual Dahl creates of her.  I think it is a great piece of writing because he doesn't really describe her physical features in detail - just uses one or two details and that is enough - and describes her more by her actions.  Yet the reader can create a picture of this nasty woman quite clearly.
I read this extract to my class and asked them to describe someone in a similar way.  Choosing details that build a picture without necessarily disclosing many physical attributes.
One or two described teachers or classmates, a couple wrote about their dogs and one did a clever piece on facebook.  These were the ones people were willing to share!

Board Meeting

We assembled all the desks into a conference table and sat around to discuss our learning this quarter.  I had prepared an agenda which I gave to the class the day before so they could look over it - if they were inclined.
At first, I thought it was going to backfire on me as I was the only one talking, but as we began to brainstorm ideas of how the individuals and class felt they learned best and things we had done last semester, the discussion became alive.  I asked them to do a quick critique of the brainstormed list with the person opposite them and then we went round the table to solicit the most liked ideas.
Most of the class wanted to transfer the book club to the poems we would be studying this first few weeks. However, they also wanted time for class reading of the poem at the beginning of each session.  Finally, they seemed to like the idea of the layered curriculum activities we did for The Crucible for getting deeper into the text, so we will be doing all three!
It was great to hear them reflecting on what works best and how a mix of strategies helps the learning process deepen.

We're Back

School began today and I started off on the wrong foot - arriving slightly late.  But I received a warm welcome and told the class i could definitely get used to that!!
We talked through the Wiki we had completed and I asked them to re-edit, keeping in mind some features of non-fiction, using a few magazines to make my point about how font size and colour is often used to draw the eye to the beginning of each paragraph.
We also talked about copyright of images - something that I also forget.  Images seem so widely available and accessible it's hard to remember they are not always free.  I have been trying to brush up on my knowledge of creative common licenses and it was a good reminder to us as a class that this is necessary.