Where to next with the ILA?

What worked

 

There were three things that I feel have worked extremely well so far in my ILA and they are:

1. The use of ICT’s to create a new and exciting work space for the students. Most of their work in school is centred around book work or in creating something that needs to be physically handed in. Giving the students the chance to work entirely in the digital world has allowed them to use their own knowledge about the internet and its tool to create some really great pieces of work.
2. The extra time I put into teaching the students how to research properly. This was something I added after the first questionnaire. Ever since these lessons and along with some small group work on note taking, the students all feel much better about their ability to not only find lots of information but also find the correct information that is relevant to their task at hand.
3. Finally, I have been pleased with the extra formative work I plotted out for the students to help them better prepare themselves for picking their own creative way to present their work. Because I have placed such a huge emphasis on the children experimenting with many different presentation web 2.0 tools I have been able to see some fantastic and really individualised work from my students where in the past I may have just seen 27 variations of the same poster or power point presentation.

 

What did not work

 

To be honest, there is not really anything that did not work, although there are things I would do differently that I will talk about later in the post. All the tasks so far have been engaging and the students have enjoyed it. My lessons have led to some great discussions and there has not been anything that on reflection has been missing or needed extra work. All in all I have been very pleased with the ILA so far.

 

What I would do differently

 

Although the unit so far has been a complete success and something that I will use again with another group of students in future years, there is still a number of things that I could do to not change, but augment the current plan as is.

• Add something to the very start of the the unit to help engage my students quicker. The results from the first questionnaire showed that nearly half the students were not too excited about the topic at the start of the unit. However these same students soon changed their minds in questionnaire 2. This shows me that the work is engaging and interesting but that I did not introduce the topic in as stimulating way as I could have. Whether that involves some sort of excursion to perhaps the museum or maybe a talk from a leader in the community or school (Local party member or principle of the school?). By engaging my students quicker and getting them excited sooner the discussions we are having now could be made even deeper for the next group.
• Have the students do more work in groups. This does not be an assessment task but could be simple role plays or discussions based on questions I asked. I feel that the unit is good but it does lean more towards individual work. This needs to change because leadership requires both leaders and followers and by creating small groups in my classroom we could start to see and comment on certain leadership roles being created and changed every day.
• As I said in a previous blog post, I want to move even further away from giving my students answers. This is not something I would change in the ILA but more what I would change about my teaching methodology. There are times when I need to give explicit instruction but there were multiple times when I simply gave the students the answers. I need to find the correct balance.