In my on-going discussions with my department about my inquiry, I described to a colleague how well I thought my lesson went with my year 9’s, in learning the 7 concepts we need to know in our new Government unit. I explained in my lesson, I had to focus on just getting the concepts learnt repeatedly and that this was a change in my teaching that taught me how to be more patient with my kids. She wanted to see what this looked like so I offered to take one of her year 9 classes through the same lesson, for the first period in a double.
My reflections:
The class was 9PDv and I taught exactly the same lesson that I’d taught the day before with 9PKr. As it was just the first period of a double, their teacher continued to support their learning of the concepts during the next period. I felt they are responded really well to the lesson because they seemed engaged and did not shy away too much from giving it a go. I have not taught them before and it was refreshing to have different faces in front of me and different dynamics in a classroom.
Staff feedback:
The feedback from my colleague was that she enjoyed seeing how I engaged the students in slowing the learning and forcing them to use their brains to learn. She was surprised to see some of the loud boistrous boys standing up and giving the challenges a go. She liked the way the kids stay focussed on the tasks and it gave her encouragement to try the model that I’d shown her. She also shared it was one of the rare times that they’d been fully engaged.
A student teacher who’d also observed the lesson said ‘in both my practicuums, it was best teaching that had the kids so engaged that I’d seen so far, no offence’. (I was abit taken aback by this comment but felt humbled as well)
Student feedback through blogs:
Before the end of their double period, my colleague asked her class to blog about what they’d learnt during the lesson. I enjoyed reading the blogposts below and felt positive and glad that they’d learnt what we’d set out to achieve.
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