Standard+4.3.4

=Assist colleagues to design and facilitate a wide variety of purposeful group structures that support student engagement to make content meaningful. =

In our study of electricity I asked my year 8 class to collect a battery, a bulb and two wires and make the bulb light up. When the students did this, I then asked them to describe what was actually going on inside the wires and the students came up with 4 possible models. Essentially we started by describing the 4 models that the girls described in their last lesson and a discussion ensued where the girls worked out how they might test their ideas and what the results for each model would look like. They then went to their practical stations to carry out the activity and get their results. The results confirmed one particular view and then we enacted that particular view of electricity. The students then modeled their idea, physically, by allocating a couple of students as batteries, a student as a buzzer, and 2 as ammeters on opposite sides of the ‘circuit’ (i.e. classroom). The rest of the students were then the electrons, carrying a green piece of paper (signifying energy), moving around the classroom (circuit) and giving the paper to the buzzer. Each time the ‘buzzer’ received a piece of paper she said “buzz”. The ammeters counted the number of people who passed by them. This activity was videoed.

After discussion in the staff room I showed some of my colleagues this video and they carried out this lesson with their classes. One of the [|emails] describing their lesson is included as evidence of sharing this knowledge of the way in which students’ intellectual and conceptual development do not always go hand in hand.

Another colleague was having some trouble with one of her classes and asked me to come in and give my opinion about how she could handle the situation. After observing her class I made a number of [|suggestions]concerning seating arrangements and organization which she had since implemented and found that they did make her lessons more productive.

Over the past year I have been using a 'flipped class" pedagogical model [idem] with some of my classes. This model provides for greater student engagement, teacher guidance and greater student choice. I have been asked to present this model at our next [|School Development Day]