Category Archives: Suggestions

ISW Diary (personal reflection book)

Here is a variation of ISW reflection booklet I have tried: ISW Diary (reflection book)

The idea is to have a compact, portable and accessible booklet that serves a variety of functions throughout the ISW, and can be a memorable personal record of a participant’s growth over the 3 days. ISW Diary is handed to the participant at the beginning of Day 1 icebreaker and captures their journey through their workshop by recording:

  • Their very first interactions with other participants in Day 1 Large Group icebreaker,
  • Their daily personal goals and reflections for the Small Groups,
  • Their creative expression of what they see as an ‘ideal’ classroom (Day 3 Small Group icebreaker), and finally,
  • Their thank-you messages at the end of Day 3.

The pictures below demonstrate how the booklet is folded and used. This particular version is designed for a specific Day 1 Large Group icebreaker and Day 3 Small Group icebreaker (details explained below on the pictures). Please feel free to modify and improve it to include different cool ideas you might have!

Express Thank-you Cards

In an ISW where we had limited cards and ended up having limited time to do the thank-you cards, I tried the following:

  • Gave the participants regular index cards (5 * 3 in, or larger, if available) at the beginning of Day 3 SG session
  • As icebreaker, asked them to draw their ‘ideal teaching environment’ on the blank side of the card
  • Collected the cards for the time being and told them that we’re going to do something fun with them at the end of the day
  • At the end of the day, gave the cards back to the participants, asked them to pass their card to the next person, and asked them to write one or two words that expresses what they admire in that person

The process takes considerably less time than a conventional thank-you card, and the resulting cards can be very creative and inspiring!

Recording the creative feedback on video

On Day 3, I gave the participants the option to have their creative feedback recorded on video. As they all consented, we basically had self-facilitated feedback cycles at the end of which I might add a question or two to expand on an important topic that had come up either in the feedback cycle, or something that was discussed in our 1-on-1 reflection with the instructors. I copied the feedback video along with their mini lesson and gave it to them at the end of the day.

Active Learning Techniques lottery

At the end of the Day 2 small group session, I suggested that each participant pick a specific active learning technique that they have liked among those introduced in the preceding two days, and challenge themselves to use it in their Day 3 mini-lesson. The suggestion was received with enthusiasm and actually one of our participants came up with a fun way to do it: using the cuttings of the handout of active learning techniques, we crumpled them into balls and put them in a bowl. Each participant then could draw a couple of techniques out of the bowl (these were 14 techniques that they had worked on both on the online module as well as the theme session on the same morning, so they were reasonably familiar with all of the techniques.)  I greatly encouraged them to use their ‘lottery techniques’ in the following mini-lesson, if they felt comfortable.

This activity was essentially meant as a reflective practice to get them to take one step further from just reading about, summarizing and even evaluating the active learning technique, and seriously consider them for application in near future. I was pleasantly surprised the next day when I saw that most of them had really incorporated the lottery techniques in their lesson and were happy about the experience!

Using post-it check lists on the doors to keep the facilitators informed of the other small group’s progress

In order to make sure both small groups finish around the same time on the occasions we needed to go back to the large group on a specific time, we used the following simple tool. We posted a half-page check list, like the one shown below, on the door of each room with a marker close at hand. This way, each facilitator could simply check off the stage and min-lesson they had just completed. This proved to be a convenient way of knowing where the other group is at without interrupting them, and adjusting the cycle pace if necessary.

Table