The power of kids teaching kids

I feel strongly about getting children to teach each other. They get so much more understanding of concepts when they not only learn but have to understand each concept enough to be able to teach others.
At the beginning of the term I was talking to one of my students who showed some great understanding about something I was trying to teach. Once he completed the set task I asked him to become the teacher and explain what to do to the rest of his group. He looked concerned and asked, "why do you ALWAY get us to teach each other?"
This comment made me giggle. I made my most innocent face and said, "Be honest with me! How often do you switch off when I talk too much?"
To that comment he scratched his head and looked at his feet. "Does that answer your question?' I asked. He just nodded.

I have adopted a new teaching model for my maths lessons.
Model
Do
Create

At first we look at a strategy. We work together as a group, looking at materials, discussing the strategy and trying it out together. The children then move on to complete some questions on their own. After the kids have had a practice they begin by creating videos using our cameras, laptops and iPad to show their understanding of the strategies. We create videos of children working with materials, we also use apps such as ShowMe and Educreations.
I am still getting there in terms of loading the videos onto our wiki page but here is what I have put up already:
http://room26pvs.wikispaces.com/Our+Maths+Vids

What I found really, and I mean, REALLY useful about doing this is the instant feedback about what the children understand and what they still need help with. I can see if I have to revisit a strategy to clarify some learning or I can see when kids need to move on.

To anyone who decides to give this a go I would say, go for it!
There are some things you have to be aware of:

• make sure you teach your students how to present their videos (we're still working on this one). For the first few videos I have had to constantly remind the kids to explain what they are doing step by step. They found it quite tricky at the beginning but they are getting much better at explaining what to do.
• get the kids to work with a buddy or a group of three (any more becomes unmanageable). This way you get great discussions about the learning. When one is stuck or has made a mistake then the other(s) is quick to correct them and help explain where they went wrong. So they are teaching each other in the video making process.
• talk to the students about how they use their cameras. I still get very shaky videos which can make a person feel motion sick while watching. Tripods are great, if you don't have one of those get one child to hold the camera and the other to write or move materials.

The next step for me is to apply this video making process to other curriculum areas. Watch this space!

How do you use video in your class?

Spaces so far - the good, the bad and the ugly

Last week I wrote about my new spaces that I created in my room. Today I thought that I would write about what I'm experiencing so far...

I'm finding that we had a great start at the beginning of last week. However, we have had a disruption to the flow and my kids have come back with some interesting behaviours. What I found on Friday last week and so far this week is quite far from what I had hoped. So here is what I'm thinking we need to do!

• Revisit our rules - what are OUR expectations from both myself and the students? What do the children want from these spaces? How do they expect their peers to act in the different areas we have?
• I think I need to be clear that choices will be given to those who have earned that right. I may need to set up some spaces for kids who may need to go and work on their own if they are not managing themselves. 
• Speaking of Managing self. I will revisit what this is and discuss what managing self means to us. What should we see when people are managing them selves? How can we help those who are having trouble with this? 

So that's the plan to getting back on track. What do you do when your students are having trouble making wise choices?

On a positive note. Our new classroom space has really worked for some of my students. They are focused and are using our different spaces wisely. They are discussing their work, moving around to find the space that best fits the task they are working on and most importantly they are achieving great results. So now I need to make sure that all my kids are using their space to extend themselves. 

Changes on the horizon!

Feeling inspired by the amazing speakers I listened to last week during the "It's a Learners World" conference, I decided to make some changes to my class. The furniture was rearranged, bits and pieces bought, assembled and placed around the room. So far I have only seen amazing things from my kids. The first step I implemented was create a few spaces in my class that the kids could go to get away and work on their own. Firstly I put some mosquito nets up. These are now our CAVE spaces. When they go in, they have to work independently.

Our couch became our Mountain Top/Campfire space. The couch is in front of the interactive white board. I thought that this way the children can share their work with each other using the IWB (so far we found out that we can fit 10 kids on the couch).

The back of the couch doubles as a sitting space also.

We also have some round tables set up as Campfire spaces. There we work in a group. Another big success was our sandpit space. This is our practical working area. We have already used this to demonstrate how magma seeps through tectonic plates.

My class has really enjoyed our new spaces. On a number of occasions this week they were so engrossed in what they were doing that they didn't rush of on the bell. This is what I observed earlier in the week. 

Exciting!!!