Tag Archives: Experiment

#unplugged: 11 lo-tech ways to shake up your teaching (for those not at #bett2012)

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It is an exciting week for many teachers this week as full BETT fever takes hold. For many more teachers however daily lessons go on. To add some fun and interest, here are eleven challenges to try out. Choose one, have a go, feed back!

1. Teach all day with no power. No lights, no computers, no phones.

2. Don’t answer a single question you ask your class all day.

3. Introduce your lessons using only three of your senses.

4. List all the tangents the children take you on for areas to explore in the future.

5. Have the children review your lesson/teaching.

6. Teach from the back of the class rather than the front.

7. Brainstorm using an OHP and acetates.

8. Find out two new things about everyone in your class. Try to do this without them knowing.

9. Halve the writing tools and make the pupils share.

10. Have the class write your next lesson plan as their plenary.

11. Make a blank display board become your main teaching focus, building it up over the lesson.

Violent computer games make your kids negative: Discuss

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This is a response to a Channel 4 program, Extreme Parenting, in which a segment was given over to a study of Violent games.

A group of boys were randomly divided in two, and asked to play either a football game or a violent game. Their heart rates were monitored during this. They were then asked to view violent news footage, and again their hearts were monitored. Lastly, selected children were given an incident to intervene using politeness (pens were ‘accidentally’ dropped off a table). This being TV, violent games were clearly more ‘dangerous’ than non-violent games.

I felt there were several flaws in the set-up and outcome of this TV experiment, and would like to point out my concerns. Continue reading →

Feeding Back on Student Feedback

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Any feedback? (Image:Wwworks CC)

Any feedback? (Image:Wwworks CC)

I am about to carry out a school-wide feedback experiment, but first a little background reflecting!

It is perhaps as common in Teaching as it is in other professions, but we tend to let negativity cancel out a disproportionate amount of praise. A successful parent’s evening can be brought down by one comment, and have us brooding for days.

The problem here though is that much of the feedback tends to be (a) from parents, and (b) delivered in extremes – only when a problem is too large to cope do we sometimes hear about it. Continue reading →