In theory, this is a "quiet" week as classes have all ended, but for me it is more like being Lewis Hamilton waiting for the qualifying rounds at Silverstone last Saturday! Lewis went on to spectacular Formula 1 win the following day, but qualifying wasn't easy...
As I write, I have a student in the exam room, on a 3rd exam re-take. This is a mature student from an African country, who has excellent craft skills, but has weak English literacy skills I've been using a technique I call "power revision" and is multi-sensory.. at one point, I freaked out everyone in the staff room and my poor student when I pretended to get an electric shock from a fan the student was switching on. Although I am with one student, I don't use pen and paper, but a large white-board and coloured board markers, and I often act-out or dramatise scenarios the student might encounter on a construction site. (During one session, I drew on one of our college windows, that happens to face the new Wembley Stadium, to teach the concept of scale.) I also have a PC at the side, ready to do Google searches.
We revise ONLY the subjects that are exam-relevant, and at the same time, I help build and expand the student's vocabulary.
He took the exam for the 3rd time this morning, and rather like driving on a wet race track after it has been bone dry all weekend, the computerised exam threw up a massive amount of questions we had never revised. I'm hoping and praying that this afternoon, the questions will be kinder to him.. Does this experiment work? Well, here are the results so far:
1st take; 10th June 2008: 22% (3 hours 1:1 power revision; 1.5 hours general 1:1 revision)
2nd take; 30th June 2008: 37.5% (7 hours 1:1 power revision)
3rd take; 7th July 2008: 42% (5 hours 1:1 power revision + homework)
4th take; 7th July 2008 ??% (45 minutes debrief and evaluation)
Will he take poll position... watch this space!
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2 comments:
John,
I hope many collegues follow your blog and the ideas on power revision.
I am convinced that there is great potential in focused activities likeyou mention - too many lessons are boring and "paded" out - they appear well structured etc but can be ineffective.
A little more extreme but you might be interested in looking at micro teaching ideas - see link below for links to experiments at Merton school on this
http://del.icio.us/martinrichardking/microteaching
Reading your post Brother John made me get the point of the way/method u teach... its through demonstration / Experiential approach and I must say that this is INDEED the best way to TEACH Students for them to EASILY catch up the lesson and will always leave an impact to the minds of the students of the HOWS' and WHYS' and from here they would always remember what have they learned from u as their teacher...
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