My school implemented some changes this year, including extending the lessons from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. This meant changing the pedagogy of the lesson. The longer period allows me to go deeper with the student learning and also to put in place some routines that ensure reflection occurs.
To help me get into a new routine I created the following sequence:
5 minutes: Entry routine and silent starter
10 minutes: Today's questions and Teacher Talk
55 minutes: Student activities (at least one per question) while teacher roams
20 minutes: Silent Study while teacher checks student learning then exit routine.
The Silent Starter is a short activity that will often check student understanding of the previous lesson and gets them 'in the zone' for learning.
The questions for the day provide the students with the focus of the lesson and are set as questions that they should be able to answer by the end of the lesson. I talk for no more than 10 minutes at this time and I often get a student to time me so I stick to it. Research has shown audiences are most attentive in the first 10 minutes of a talk, after that their attention wanes.
The following block of 55 minutes is the 'messy learning' a series of activities the students do in any order they wish to help them learn and solve the questions for the day. I roam the class at this point helping those who need it and talking with small groups.
Finally, the noise level drops back down to silence. Silent Study is where the students make their own notes into their books about the learning that have done for that lesson. The quality of the notes depends on the ability and age of the learner. Some students will simply copy out the questions on the whiteboard and answer these to the best of their ability. Others with turn the question and answer into a full statement, while others will write down other new learning they did in class as well and create solid, ordered notes they can look back on to help them learn.
In practice this sequence isn't quite as it is written. The first block of time usually takes 10 minutes instead of 5, by the time the students enter the class and get settled. The teacher talk is ALWAYS 10 minutes. The messy learning is usually 45 minutes and the Silent Study is more like 15 minutes. The students don't need 20 minutes to write down their notes.
Usually I have about 5 minutes at the end of class where I do a Q & A with the class. They have tidied up, and are sitting at their desks ready to go. I then read out each question from the board and tell the students to have an answer ready. Then I call a student name. They give me their best answer. If they can't they may pass to another student. I call this Pounce and Bounce.
This is a quick and easy way for me to see if the learning has occurred in the lesson. What is important in this activity is that I allow the students think time before naming a student. I actually stay quiet and count to ten in my head before asking a student.
I hope to go into more detail about what I have learned by choosing this sequence of activities in future blogs.
