Learning Event Generator and Copenhagen

To me, as geographers, we should all be teaching and covering what is going on at Copenhagen over the next two weeks and beyond. I'm long a believer in Floating Topicality, so all classes that I teach will be looking at what's going on. I also encourage my department to do the same. There are some ideas on the SLN thread. Here, I want to share my plans this week. I have to say that this lesson is all down to my attendance at the Innovative Teachers Forum last week. During his keynote, John Davitt pointed out that stress kills learning and that more planning should be done while walking to your next lesson. Coincidentally, the advice about planning mirrors one of my first teaching mentors whose words were 'if you need to do an in depth bit of planning, walk a bit slower between the staff room and the classroom.'

I'm not advocating never planning. Having said this, the results of this lesson were the result of a completely unplanned idea.

The idea went something like 'Let's use the Learning Event Generator to explore what on earth is going on in Copenhagen.'

That's the sort of lesson plan I like ;-)

Good job then, that the lesson started well:
Me: What's going on at Copenhagen over the next two weeks?
Class: Copenwhaaaaa?
Me: You, know, some big event. Not that important, just discussing the future of humanity.
Class: You going off on one sir?

So, assessment of existing knowledge over, I moved on:

The photo above shows the careful, low-tech adjustments that I needed to make to the Learning Event Generator. With John's stress killing words in my ear I decided to give the group, a middley-low ability Year 8 class, 5 options. These turned out to be:

a 20 second rap
An army marching song
A 50 word account
A Role Play
A mime

The aim was simply to be able to find out what all the fuss was about. I sat back, waiting for the off-task behaviour to start. And was stunned. Total engagement. Even the two lads who were late got straight on:

Late Lads: What we doing sir?

Me: That

Late Lads: OK

Above is a work in progress. This is a class that struggles to engage with literacy. I was buzzing.

The Wordle.net above was the result of a deal made between myself and one pair or students. Instead of a 50 word account, they wanted to use a wordle that contained 50 words linked to Copenhagen. Above is the work in progress. When asked how this could be made better they pointed out that the most important words, such as UN, global, climate, should be larger.

The lesson ended with a celebration of work, shown on the screens around the room, the class rotated, reading and discussing the work. During the lesson, I also published screenshots of the work in progress on Twitter. I did this as I was both proud and impressed by the work, and I thought that it deserved a wider audience. This was to increase the ammount of positive feedback that the pupils were getting.

I urge everyone to try this at least once!

How else can we cover the Copenhagen Conference?

Copenhagen

View more presentations from David Rogers.

High Impact, Low effort

This month is the start of the #29daysofwriting challenge. I enjoyed this last year and will be using my Staffrm account to post. I'll also be reporting here, both to give a little more detail and to keep a log of what I have written. The challenge developed a great sense of community last year, which is why I'm choosing to write on Staffrm. What I would say to those who are new to writing or don't want to run out of ideas is: Write for yourself. Clarify an idea, write something out loud. The process of distilling thoughts into writing is immensely beneficial to your practice. If other read, comment and respond, that's a bonus. Ignore the muppets who know nothing of your context, style or students. Mix it up - I like to read about real stuff from real classrooms and schools and also about other stuff. If we always write about school, how does that work for workload? If you've nothing nice to say, don't say it. So, the following has been ...

What makes a learning experience profound? Personal reflections and possible implications for classroom practice.

I have recently begun a Leadership Pathways journey. As part of the first core day, we were asked to reflect on a profound learning experience. This got me thinking about how many profound learning experiences I have both been involved in, and how many I have been able to give to others. Our group came up with a huge long list, but these are my five. Emotional Connected Demanding Reflective Collaborative As always, these are personal thoughts and quite mixed up. I put them here so that I can look back on them (plus they’d get lost inside my world-cup-free brain) 1. Emotional I can’t think of a time where deep learning hasn’t engaged my emotions. From being awe inspired to that tingle feeling when a student gets a light bulb moment. From this-is-the-happiest-day-ever, to I-think-I’m-about-to die. How often do we engage the emotions of those we teach? Here, I would argue that having a safe learning environment i...

Banned Word Board

Today I want to share some simple ideas that I have found to be very effective in the classroom. I can't say that they are my own original ideas, although I have played around with them. The first is the Banned word Board. This is a simple display in the classroom that lists a number of words that are not allowed to be used by pupils in their written or oral answers. The effect has been an increase in the quality of written work, and I have almost made comments such as 'Sir it's simple, the stuff just affects the thing and causes people problems'. Pupils are now more able to use specific language, something that is vital especially at GCSE. I have had to make a few modifications, such as the introduction of 'Heavenly Words' This is an additional display placed on the ceiling. I found this necessary as pupils needed some stimulus in finding replacement words. After advice received after posting the idea on the SLN forum , I have also introduced semi-banned words...

David Rogers

Search This Blog