A lesson from today (success!)

My locally developed history class has had some difficulty with the course content so far. Today, I decided to challenge them to raise the bar as far as what they accomplish in class and how hard they work. They were very successful with this lesson; here is how it went:

1. Students wrote the word "ROARING" vertically in their notes and tried to associate each letter with a term or phrase that related to some aspect of the Roaring Twenties. I wrote their ideas on the Smartboard. This was an excellent way to access prior knowledge (I use it quite a bit in all courses).

2. We reviewed the fact that the Twenties are called roaring because they were "exciting, fast-paced, and loud" for many Canadians. I told them that we were going to see if all groups in this country would describe the twenties as roaring based on their experiences. We were going to focus on immigrants and Aboriginal people.

3. We used an anticipation guide last week, so I thought it would be good to use one again. The kids remembered how they work, so I didn't have to do much up-front instruction.

4. Next, I put the students into pairs. Each person was responsible for filling in a 5ws+H chart for his or her topic, then they would teach the information to their partner. After the research was done, I had the students move their desks so they were face to face. I also told them that they had to refer to their peer teacher as "Mr." or "Miss" just to keep things authentic. This added some fun to the process. As the students taught each other I circulated and intervened when necessary. I was able to have several quick but meaningful conversations with students as they interacted with each other.

This class went by so quickly, and I was very impressed by how they stayed on task. Their level of concern went up immediately when they knew that they would be partly responsible for their partner's learning. We didn't quite finish the entire lesson, but we are in a great position to start tomorrow's class.

We will return to the anticipation guide and then I will probably have them write a response to the prompt: Did the twenties roar for everyone?