Year 11 and 12 practice learning and metacognition

Reflective Teacher isn't on spring break! I love her two thoughts:

1) Drama —

I use drama in my computer classes!

It works so very well. I use it to complete my teaching of time management/ planning information. I have the students create a skit showing the ineffective use of the techniques I taught them and then a parallel skit showing the effective use of them. It is an excellent tool and I use it 2-3 times a year on the stage in the auditorium. (Plan ahead and they will bring props and costumes.)

Reflective teacher used it to teach Macbeth. (She also had some cool props.)

Year 11 and 12 practice learning and metacognition: “I had such a good teaching day yesterday. One of the elements that made it great was putting into practice an idea I got from Germana, a friend/colleague ….students get into groups and plan how they would stage the murder of King Duncan. In the play this occurs off stage, but asking students to think about how Macbeth would hold the dagger, with what demeanour he enters the room, his body language during the event and what he does just afterwards requires students to interpret Macbeth’s character and complex motivations and emotions during this critical time in the narrative.

2) Introducing blogging to another class.

She also introduced blogging to her 12th year students and it went very well.

I set up a class blog on Learner Blogs and each of the students set up their own blogs for exploring and reflecting on their learning. It was so easy…The interesting thing is the metacognition that goes into choosing a name for their blog which shows why they think they’re doing blogging in the first place… Each time I introduce it to a new class it gets easier for me and I reflect here on my own learning.

It seems so natural now that the students have a space where they can write informally on the subject matter and thinking that they are engaged in during the day, and when the excitement and social aspect of learning moves into the more reflective place of thinking about their learning that they should have a place to do it that is connected to their classmates asynchronously. In this way the conversation can continue but perhaps at a deeper level than is available in the ‘hurly burly’ of the classroom.

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Wow! She is great! Check out reflective teacher! I agree with her 100% on this post!