Standard+5.3.4

=Employ a variety of classroom management strategies to maximise the use of classroom time for productive learning. =

I set up my classes as collaborative learning groups and use a number of different strategies in order to maintain student engagement and enhance productive learning. My students work, variously as individuals, in prac groups of, generally 2-3 but no more than 4, and in small working groups, depending on the task. I usually leave the number of people they work with and the people they choose to work with, up to them. The only time I intervene is when I see that a particular group is not working productively.

For many years I have devised at least 2 self paced units per class e.g. the year 10 OneNote package [|Origins]. These self paced units contain all the factual material that the students need to fulfill the syllabus outcomes. I have started using OneNote for some, as this program allows me to provide a rich array of resources to support the students’ learning. As students work through the package I am able to interact with them, individually or in their groups, to help clear any misunderstandings and offer extensions for those who are interested and capable. It enables me to give them clear feedback on these formative tasks. I always include some exercises for self assessment. In this particular unit I have added a number of past School Certificate questions. Because students are able to gather the factual information as homework I often use these questions to help students develop their higher order thinking skills as we discuss the possibilities of different ways of responding to questions in class.

By providing the course material to the students and suggesting that homework is the fairly straightforward work of gathering the factual material, class time is used more productively in helping students develop their higher order skills.

I have taken this concept further in my year 12 Biology class by providing rich resources for the factual collection part of the course, [|Year 12 iSchool] so that we are able to spend more time doing practical investigations and developing higher order skills by discussing the implications of the factual material they have acquired and, because of the pressures of HSC, analyzing, discussing and responding to past questions and situations that we hear about in the press or even newspapers.

This ‘Flipping’ the classroom has proved highly successful with students engaged in gathering content as they are able to do so at their own pace, using high quality resources. If they don’t fully understand some information they are able to rewind, pause, look up other resources or just stop because they need to. The students have taken responsibility for their learning and our lessons are far more interesting and productive because it is not just me, the teacher being the font of all knowledge.

This also means that our 'class time' is spent more productively as we are able to engage in higher order discussions, more in depth investigations and overcoming misunderstanding or confusion.