Today was all about playing with ideas related to increasing the level of active participation in your lessons. What kind of instructor would I be if I didn’t actively involve you in the process of making sense of today’s content? After all, you and your students can’t sit around in class all day watching funny YouTube clips like this one featuring Lando Calrissian…er, Billy Dee Williams:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSS5wReR9u0[/youtube]
Newspaper Tower Challenge [NOT The Paper Bridge Challenge]
I charged you with building as tall a tower as you could using only 2 sheets of newspaper and, in the second challenge, building another tower using 2 sheets of paper and 20 cm of masking tape. Here’s the instruction sheet:
We ended with a short discussion on the sorts of PLOs that this task could be connected to.
The Newspaper Tower Challenge is a task found on the PBS Building Big website. You can check out this video clip to see how a group of middle school students approached the task. They did a very nice job!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD58pkqBXwE[/youtube]
Framing Questions
I put forth a case for including active participation in your planning via the PPT slideshow below:
We followed that up with a look at the effective framing of questions as one means to keep students engaged. This section of the class was based on work by Barrie Bennett in his book Beyond Monet.
I asked you to use concept formation – the cousin of concept attainment, the strategy we played with last class – to sort the data set of questions in ways that made sense to you and your partner. As a focus for the task, I asked you to consider what impact each question would likely have on student participation.
Here’s the data set:
Here’s a link to info on concept formation, as well as many other instructional tactics and strategies:
Next, I asked you to read and process information on 10 concepts and skills related to the effective framing of questions using the Jigsaw strategy. The concepts and skills we examined were as follows:
- Complexity of the Thinking (concept)
- The Amount of Academic-Engaged Time (concept)
- The Use of Wait Time (skill)
- Responding to Students’ Responses (skill)
- Knowledge of Results (skill)
- Shifting from Covert and Overt (concept)
- Fear of Failure and Dependency (concept)
- Public vs. Private Failure (concept)
- Distribution of Responses (skill)
- Accountability and Level of Concern (concept)
The reading handout and Jigsaw graphic organizer are below:
We wrapped with a few big ideas related to the framing of questions, a quick review of what went down in LLED 320 class overall, and an exit slip – what was one take away idea from this term’s 320 class.
I’ve enjoyed teaching this class and I wish you all the best of luck on prac. Please remember that the blog is always up for you to access if you need a great teaching idea… or a good laugh! (I post some pretty funny videos. Please see Billy Dee William’s Harry Baals, above).
Take care,
– Lawrence