This completely goes against the traditional view of the classroom in which there is a teacher out the front asking questions and the students sitting at their desk raising their hand to answer them.
But traditional only gets us so far in our teaching practice. After all it’s 2020 and we now know so much about students and how best to engage them in their own learning. I have already learnt so much in my relatively short teaching career so far. Eight years ago, I had a very traditional view of teaching. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel like I did a good job in the classroom and my students made fantastic progress over those first few years. But I hadn’t yet explored my own contemporary view of teaching. Put it this way; I only received answers from my confident and competent students. So gold star for me, I thought! My students were learning what I was teaching! But in reality, many of those students may have already known the answers to my questions. And if they didn’t, they were always going to be the confident ones giving it a go. This left behind over three quarters of the class who could easily have gone an entire week without contributing a response or having a go. Fast forward to my teaching practice now. I aim to promote a classroom environment where every student feels that their contribution is valid and valued, regardless of the correctness of their response. Not only that, I want my students to know that if they are in my classroom they are there to work hard not cruise along. So how do I implement this strategy in my classroom? Paddle pop sticks! (Not sure what they call these outside Australia… tongue depressors?). Every student has a stick with their name on it, and they live in a container on my desk. When it comes to a discussion as part of a Math lesson, for instance, I simply take out a name at random and ask that student for a response. I then draw a second stick and invite that student to add anything they wish. Now I’m sure every classroom has a student or two that desperately want their response heard, and often those students do have a lot of valuable contributions to make. As teachers, the last thing we want to do is silence these students or discourage their involvement in discussions. For this reason, I often (not always) invite anyone in the class to add their two cents. So why the no hands-up rule? The answer is three-fold:
I hope you find this strategy as useful as I do! Mel x ~ The Aussie Teacher Mum ~
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About meMelbourne-based teacher and creator of classroom-ready educational resources. Archives
March 2020
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