Friday 30 September 2011

#MFLSAT ALEX BLAGONA – GETTING STUDENTS TO ‘MARK’ OUR LESSONS

Alex’s talk was inspired by teaching a somewhat unmotivated class. He decided to get them to ask themselves “What do I need to do to get better at French?” He took the brave step of asking the pupils to judge him at the end of each lesson, in terms of what they thought. He asked them to not be personal, but to look at the teaching and learning that had taken place. They did this by completing the sentence “I thought this lesson was... “at the back of their exercise book. How was this beneficial? Well as Alex explained, he was establishing a dialogue with the pupils by writing a comment back. In this way, he personalises the kids’ experiences of lessons, actively engaging them with their own learning. It is important to give them feedback vocabulary and ideas to a certain extent at the start to guide them, rather than just saying ‘it was funny’ etc
Doing this ensures that you can differentiate lessons according to the understanding that has taken place. You can give better feedback to parents at interviews and the pupils have more ownership of their own learning. This obviously adds value to their work. This was a really enjoyable talk, and one which I think I will adopt as we review the teaching and learning within our department.

No comments: