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Filed under: Bonnie’s Blog
On 17th September I dropped into the Certificate of Adult Teaching Advanced in the classroom carefully configured for interactive learning. The students, all of whom are teachers at UCOL, were participating in a session on classroom management. Their task was to use techniques and strategies that were based on student-centred, cooperative and collaborative learning approaches. Students should be actively involved in the learning process. Janet Walke was ‘teaching’ this class, but all the teaching came from the students.
If I hoped to hang out down the back and just watch, I had picked the wrong class. The two groups of teachers/learners had approached the topic of student centred, collaborative and interactive learning differently, but both used a range of resources and approaches. I found myself on a “bus”, not even at the back of the bus, but joining in when my number came up and I had to make a contribution. The learning drew out good practice and learner participation. We were on a journey, a learning journey, and there were no passengers.
I was at a function, the Mid Central Health DHB Health Awards last week. Mike King was the guest speaker. At one point he tried to get a bit of audience participation going but there was a weak response. He stopped, told each of us to look around us at the people around us. Then he said “So, here I am and when you look around you can be pretty sure that you are the people I am speaking to. So when I ask you a question, you are the ones who need to reply”. He led us back into the question and got a resounding reply.
Teaching can be a bit like that. Getting the students to realise that they are participating not just watching can take some doing. It helps if you are funny, like Mike King, but there are other ways to get people active in class. The group responsible for the bus trip in Janet’s class had some pretty good ideas about how to make that happen, including handing out a written question to be answered aloud, using the InterActive whiteboard to produce vehicle noises to simulate the bus in action, directive driving from the teachers who worked cooperatively..
The second group had worked out a sequence of teaching which included an assessment of the audience level, difficulty of task. We had to produce a sequence for kicking a ball and consider the body, the shift in weight, balance, and how to communicate this. The group had gathered a range of materials, banners, felts for drawing, paper that we, the students would use. This was well organised and well thought out.
This was a lively session. While we were sitting in rows on the ‘bus’ the person doing room utilisation came along. I think she wondered what the heck she’d struck, but then that is probably the nature of a good classroom: looks strange from the outside but lots going on and noisy on the inside. Good to be part of the class, so thanks for having me.
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