Day Six - Observation day and a breakthrough

Got in at 8:10am to ready myself for my Maths lesson today ... but I had prepared for it yesterday so just went through the handouts again (and again) and checked the computer was ready to present. Practised with E (one of the students) as she was starting my lesson playing a pattern on the guitar while I asked them to repeat the pattern and work out what was next in the pattern - not hard but aim here is simply to get them involved rather than me just talk. Aim is to play some XTC to them so they can see what patterns are in music (and because everyone should at least listen to "Dear God" once in their life - awesome!) Anyway, onto the teaching ...

Kids went off to Science with a specialist science teacher ... we did sound and filled test tubes and other containers to make music. Nice lesson. I left a little early so I was ready.

9:55am, kids arrive back and we are go. Kids get settled and I start on the dot of 10am with a quick chart and then I intro E. to play guitar. Beverly (observation teacher from UNE) arrives and the class greet her, E plays, all goes well. We get into the lesson ... then Bieber arrives ...

Well, not literally, but I ask the kids to pick a group - they can be in one of the following groups:

• Sport
• Bieber
• Horses
• Technology, or
• Music

They each put up their hands for the group they want to be in (I am working on the boys in the class to not ooh and yuck the Bieber whenever he is mentioned - try to get them to understand that different people like different things and that is good! You do not have to like them but you need to respect the differences). Sport is the largest group with Bieber close behind. Stereotypes work here with all boys in Sport and Technology and all girls in Bieber and Horses. Music is girls. I will work on that as well for the future - break this stereotypes down.

Once they are in their groups I give them 4 images repeated that I have cut up and made multiple colour copies.  So Bieber Group has 4 images of Justin (the girls were very excited) and the technology group has 4 images of computers, insides of computers etc etc (also very excited). I give them a big grid (A3 page) that has two rows for them to put their images on to make patterns. Within the group they break up into pairs and one person puts down a pattern - for instance they might put Image 1, Image 2, Image 1, Image 2 and so on. Second person has to complete the pattern. They do three patterns and then swap roles. The kids loved it ... cannot believe a number of things:

1. How quickly they settled into the activity once I prompted them - 4 groups of varying sizes was fine as I could go around to each one to check without having to look at each couple as a subset of the groups
2. How they managed to have even numbers in each group so the coupling worked! (love Murphy's law)
3. How many kids wanted to keep the images so they could play with them

Sorry, forgot to mention (thank you to Mrs C. for this gem), I gave each group 2 minutes to check out the photos and play, talk and laugh - got to give them that time to play first before getting into the actual exercise. Otherwise they fidget and just get distracted - love it.

Brought the class back and we did another exercise together as a group that they also loved - "in or out". So I am thinking of a pattern (eg. even number) and they call out numbers and I either put them on the "in" circle (eg. 2,4,6,8) on the board or the "out" circle. They have to guess my rule.

Feedback from Beverly ... well it was lovely and as many of you know I am not backward in coming forward - so try this ... "comfortable, clear voice, controlled, thoughtful to different kids needs, an asset to the school. Only concern is that I will not be teaching for 6 years!". Very nice, Mrs C. said it was brilliant and she is very lucky to have me in the classroom ... I must say it is very rewarding and even better is when I see the difference in individuals ... which brings me to my last story of the day ... my project ...

Two kids in class that are okay in class but I am looking to see if I can get more out of them. Mrs C. has been very supportive and so I have written a Lesson plan where these two (call them M&J) will research a computer ad (I found it at Aldi on the weekend) and tell me if it is "value", research it and make notes using mind-mapping software and then present it back to the class in PowerPoint. Second part of this work will be to create an advertisement or brochure of a computer that would be great for a family (with 2 kids aged 10 and 12) and then a second ad aimed at a 17 year old HSC student and gamer. This will involve analysis, comparison, synthesis and higher level thinking according to Bloom's Taxonomy. So, how is this going? Well today, they had some reading time and I took them out of the classroom and gave them the ad. I asked them to write down what they thought about its value and layout (that is the baseline). Then they started their research ... I asked them how would they know value and they started to research other competitors (Dell, Lenovo, HP etc) with the same (approx.) configuration. Then they started their mind-mapping notes and presentation. I asked Mrs C. to look over at the two boys who were deep in thought and then had a great discussion on what was more important ... the engine (processor) or the road (memory, graphics card etc etc). It was an analogy I had given them a day before. They were not disrupting the class and were starting to have some deep interactions. More to come ... I am also about to build another lesson based on Sport (for two other kids) and maybe one based on Music (Justin Bieber might make it again). Any suggestions of topics would be welcome - it all links back to Multiple Intelligences theory..

Great, great day, loved it ... this is going too fast ... so much to do with the class and individuals.