a million teachers, a million methods!

Correcting homework: Students opened up their report on their investigation of the animal cell. They had the headings for writing up a report. I had asked them to write a report, with their key skill: communicating, bullet points beside them.

It was interesting to look at the various attempts and in general they represented a very low standard of reporting.

Task 1: Peer assessment for learning and improvement

1. I asked the students to work in pairs to create a marking rubric for a scientific report. They composed these on their whiteboards.
   
2. I asked them to put a post-it on their report and to walk around the room with their partner and their marking rubric. I asked them to use their marking rubric to make a comment of achievement and a comment for improvement on each report.
   
3. They discusses each attempt with their partner as they walked from book to book.
   
4. They returned to their original whiteboard and I asked them to review their marking rubric based on their experiences and from the work of others that they had assessed.
   
5. I asked all students to review their own report and to make any adjustments that they wished.
   
6. I collected up all the scrapbooks to assess the report writing and to assess their progress and learning to date.
   

I am finding the progress through the content is slow, but I am calling this period 'the training in time' for myself, the teacher, and the first year students. 

Task 2: Designing an experiment with teacher scaffolding

1. I asked the students to cut up pictures on an onion, microscope, slide, cover-slip, mounted needle, dropper with Iodine, arrows and eight steps for how to prepare and examine onion cells using a light microscope.
   
2. The students worked in pairs to discuss and build their experimental design from the parts - some pairs really struggled with this and other pairs were finished very quickly.
   
3. I had not planned the following actions, but reacting on the spot, I asked those who finished quickly (and correctly) to split up and to attend to pairs who were struggling to construct the experimental design.
   
4. All groups stuck the steps of the experiment in their scrapbook.

This worked really well and as pairs finished, I split them and sent them to teach struggling pairs. The students love moving and they love the social interaction. I think this is really important for Junior students to enjoy learning in an inclusive, active learning environment. I have noticed students commenting that the class goes by very quickly and they are often shocked when the bell goes - to me, this indicates a very high level of engagement in the tasks set to them. I am going to survey the students next week to investigate which activities they are enjoying, what they would like more of and what they would like less of, as I think student autonomy and student voice gives control of the learning into the hands of the students. I think they feel more responsible for the tasks when they have contributed to their planning and design. 

Task 3 - Introducing study techniques

1. The students studied the steps of the experiment silently for two minutes. 
2. The overhead projector displayed the countdown timer. 
3. At the end of the two minutes, all students recalled as much of the diagrams and steps as they could for two minutes. They worked together, in pairs, to recall it on the AO whiteboards. 
4. Students studied the diagrams again, highlighting what they had missed by writing it on the board in a different colour marked. At the end of two minutes, they carried out another recall. 
5. They started this recall with a black whiteboard and I asked them to label or draw the parts that they forget the first time. They had two minutes to recall.
6. At the end of the recall, I asked the students to study again for two minutes. 
7. At the end of the two minutes, the students divided the shared board into two parts. I asked them to race each other this time - moving from a co-operative strategy to a competitive strategy to maintain the interest and engagement. 
8. At the end of the race, students were told to walk to a different board and to find a new partner to race. We repeated this four times. 

At the end of this task, everyone in the class could recall and write the steps and diagrams of the preparation of an onion cell. 

Homework: Recall the experiment seven times - writing, teaching it to another person, making a power-point, creating a video. I allowed the students to choose the mediums by which they would recall the information. The students were told they would be asked to carry out the experiment from memory in the double class next week, working in pairs.