Following Kenny Pieper’s wonderful guest post yesterday, I was inspired to put his ideas into action today.
The most difficult aspect was geting hold of some netbooks. The DT had some which they warned me were a bit creaky and the head of music leant me three iPads. Sorted.
To introduce the lesson, I used the idea I got from Darren Mead’s site Pedagogical Purposes on having a visual representation of the lesson for students to refer to which Darren calls the Learning Journey.
I was impressed with how quickly and accurately they worked out what they were supposed to do. I then shared Kenny’s questions and explained that everyone in the group needed to be able to answer all four questions by the end of the lesson.
As predicted the DT faculty’s netbooks proved to be exceedingly temperamental. This is always my biggest bugbear with using technology in the classroom: the frequency with which it fails to work! Things look set to stall for a while but the iPads suplemente with my laptop and a few smartphones saved the day.
I was disappointed that by the end of the lesson not everyone had fully understood mindsets theory, but then maybe I was being a little too over ambitious with a class I had never met before. However, I really enjoyed my role as a ‘grandmother’ and made sure I praised effort, especially when they felt frustrated with their progress.
As homework, I asked them to post a comment on the class blog on what they felt their mindset was and how they would use this knowledge in lessons. My favourite post so far comes from Sean:
I think that i have a fixed growth mindset because I know what im good at i know what im not so good at. I can use this in school by understanding that instead of just saying im not good at something and Ignoring it i should try and improve myself and attempt to try and change my mindset to one which could grow.
I wasn’t totally satisfied with the results and think I still have some way to go before I’m totally happy with teaching this way but it certainly seems to have had some impact on Sean.
Here is the PPT I used in the lesson, complete with learning continuums.
Seems like a success to me. My lesson was less about the pupils learning about Mindsets right away, but more about changing their Mindsets wit the lesson, if that makes sense. I think if these guys were beginning to rely less on you and more on their own ability to learn by working together then the lesson will have been a success. Strange to see those questions on someone else’s board!
Thanks Kenny – yes you’re right – it’s the process not the product that’s important. This was the first time I had met the class and they need to learn how to learn. One thing which you suggested that I didn’t do was take away their chairs – I can see now how this would have helped. I going to do the lesson again tomorrow with my other Year 9 class but this time I have sourced some iPads so the technology issues should be avoided.
Thanks for your support!
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