Today one of my year 7 classes began wrapping up our recent Body Percussion unit - I deemed it a 'Review & Reflect' session, starting with group reflection. Now I have believed reflection to be an important part of learning for a long while and have got students to do them individually for some time but today for the first time they did them as a group first (they follow with a self reflection) - this involved discussion, brainstorming, recording and sharing with the class. It actually went very well, better than I expected. I was impressed with the kids findings and also their ability to report back to the class, even taking turns to do so without me telling them to.
It was really positive and gave opportunity for less vocal students to contribute to a smaller group and was less about me in the centre of the action. I certainly want to make this a regular reflection/ self-assessment activity.
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On April 7 I'll be heading to South-East Asia for 3 weeks for a mix of work and leisure. 1 week in Danang, Vietnam working at the TIPI English Cafe then overland travel through Laos to Thailand where I'll visit my Dad and Thai step-family, then on to Singburi (3 hours north of Bangkok) for a few days work staying at Peetim's Homestay.
Here is my related blog. ngapuhiinasia2017.weebly.com/ Okay so I had my observation about 2 weeks ago and it went quite well. My observer was satisfied with the clarity and brevity of my learning intentions in the intro and the interaction with the students. She did suggest that I work on engaging the 'less likely to participate in discussions' students though (group talk and feedback) and also to utilise things like 'thumbs up/down/sideways' to quickly gage if students are following, sort of following or straight up lost! I actually filmed myself do the same lesson intro the day before and on watching the footage decided all the content was there but I took too long - it dragged. I deliberately tightened this one up. |
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Teacher/ Musician from Northland, New Zealand. |