teambuilding

I think that setting Monday aside to do some teambuilding each week is a pretty good plan. My 2Ps cemented that decision for me today. Think the teams need to be reconfigured as well. So difficult to run the show with teams when I see a different class each day. Hard to develop any team cohesion. Classbuilding needs doing as well.

hit and miss

My last post described a terrible lesson in which I tried to create teams in a 2p history class. Today, after being out the class for 1.5 days for meetings, I decided to try again. What a difference it can make when certain students are absent! I changed a few small things but kept others the same from Monday. I took one of the teambuilding ideas from a Kagan book and had the teams play "Team Boggle" for about 5 minutes before settling down to do anything academic. Today was much better, due in part to the fact that we were missing some of the negative "poison" that some students can infect a room with. I highly recommend using Boggle as a teambuilder. Now, if I can just stay in the building for more than a day at a time! Cheers.

Who Wants to Be a Teacher?

Here's the scenario:

Last period on a Monday, 2P history, I am trying to get some teams going. The students were so unresponsive to just about everything I did I had to laugh. It made me think about that game Who Wants to be a Millionaire, largely because of the lifelines. Here's why:

One lifeline (50/50?) allows you to eliminate 2 of the answers that are causing you trouble or screwing up your thought process. How about being able to "eliminate" 2 students (even briefly) in order to increase chances of success? I had 2 kids were were poison to the who lesson and I felt virtually powerless to do anything about it.

The next lifeline allows you to phone a friend. Again, it would have been great to get a friend in there to either take the class (yeah right!) or offer advice/an objective perspective.

The last lifeline is "ask the audience." I chose a modified version: "lecture the audience." I basically gave them a choice of teams or rows and everyone chose teams. I think I tried a bit too much too fast so I will meet halfway (pairs?).

Anyway, it was a disaster and such a letdown after 2 other classes were awesome with teams earlier in the day. Good challenge, though.

Kagan Workshop

We spent 2 days with Spencer Kagan, with a focus on using CL structures to better engage a student's brain. Here are the BIG ideas that came out of those 2 days:

1. Telling is not teaching.
2. The largest percentage of brain activity results when students explain things to each other.
3. Team and Classbuilding should be integrated into our weekly plans.
4. There are SOOOO many easy ways to use CL in our classes; we just need to read, practise, and dialogue about them.

I will post more examples of structures in action in the near future. Cheers.