In this article I am sharing my thoughts and experiences on “A student driven session“- delivering what you planned for them takes a shift and moves on to “What They want to learn”!!! Do we have to anticipate it all the time…or it just occurs 🙂
When a teacher turns in to a facilitator he /she facilitates sessions driven by students.
In the initial stages of teaching, Lesson plan acts as a back bone for our sessions. It’s is like a Google navigator which would display every small curve we would possibly encounter in our travel. This is to ensure we direct the session carefully and purposefully.
In my initial years, when I had just started planning using Skill Knowledge and Understanding as base for every session, it took two hours of planning time for every one hour session plan. Checking on resources took a major time, anticipating what the replies would come from the students for every question you pose was mind-boggling. Actually it still is!
Every teacher starts to realise (must realise!!!) as years pass by that the plan which is made for one set of learners will not be the same next time. Apparently, the questions you pose might remain unchanged but definitely replies will change.
We must get comfortable with situations like …
While using Lesson plan as a navigator remains unchanged in teaching practice, but things that get refined over years would be, more time allocated on reflection in our sessions.
Most importantly, teacher starts allowing the side trip during the main trip. When you travel, sometimes getting to your destination is the most important consideration. Sometimes the interests of the other people in your car are most important, and you stop to see sights that they’re interested in. There are even times when the ultimate destination becomes incidental to the trip itself.
I mean, depending on the factors like grade we handle, topics we introduce or deliver, students would expect us to stop by at every extra detail that can be discussed, while the main route remains undeterred.
A need arises, we sense the pulse of class and try to go for short trips around the main topic but ensure the main aim is achieved affirmatively. There is more scope for a silent spectator or a passive participant to emerge out and add on to the topic and surprise us.
Ignoring all of the steps from the early lesson plans is not advisable, but we need to internalize them. Out of planning, practice, reflection and review we become so familiar with the various routes for this particular destination that we seldom need a navigator any longer.
Here is when we start looking for many “Aa-ha!” moments and get more open to learn with learners. There would be more occasions where we would not hesitate to say, “Let me get back to you on this.”
I have personally had many such sessions and I am sure many of my readers would also have had too. Here’s when we actually are involving students taking the owner ship and accountability for what they want to learn.
Recently, in one my session in Science for grade one, one of my session plan was to do a survey on waste around in the immediate neighbourhood and sort the waste in categories. Post the outdoor activity we( My students and myself) tried linking it to Math Data Handling and made a bar graph with all groups’ inputs.
As I was trying to ask questions to check inference an idea struck me and I encouraged learners to frame their own question and pose those questions to their peers based on data collected. I realized the session was moving from Lower order thinking of understanding and comprehension to the higher order of Analysing and Create.
While they started using the questioning words (Language Arts skill –applied) appropriately to frame question, I was left wondering Was this a science session?
Students showed complete engagement in framing questions and asked each other. Session of science connected to Math and ended with Language Arts skills. Although the initial starting point was decided by me as a teacher, it took the short trip on the way with the display of students’ own skill, knowledge and understanding.
I remained a facilitator which was more productive than the former role.
This realization in us allows us to travel the path -student driven session.
Be systematic, enjoy the small curves and pleasures that will definitely keep us on our toes resulting on meaningful transactions in classroom.
Let the teaching learning sessions be not like this…
acknowledgements: Pics google images
The Teacher Connections 