By Kathy Bol
The
first lesson I did as part of 4SI was for an English 2D class. This was a
typical 2D class - about 30 students, some ELL learners, some at-risk students,
and some academic students. We were about to start studying Othello and I wanted to do a pre-reading
activity to prepare the students for the play. In the past, I would have
started this unit by having the students copy a note with all the details about
the play - themes, images, etc. With the focus on critical thinking, my aim now
is to let the students "unpack" the text on their own as we read.
However, I still place a lot of value on pre-reading activities, especially for
difficult texts like Shakespeare. I also wanted to incorporate the strategies
which we were focusing on with 4SI - accountable talk, questioning and making
inferences.
One of
the ideas I brought to the group was a "murder mystery" activity
which we refined together. Each group of
students would be given a bag containing several items: a picture of a sword, a
picture of a pillow, confetti, a letter from Iago, a news article about
Othello, and several quotes from the play. One of the ideas that was generated
by the team was to change the names and details so that they weren't directly
from Othello (in case some students
knew the play, and not to give away too much of the story). So, the letter was
from Rick to Ian, and the article was about General Leo and his wife Diane. I was
careful not to tell them that it was about Othello.
The
class would be told that there had been a murder and they were to use the items
in their bag to solve it. The questions they had to answer were: Who was
killed? By whom? What was the murder weapon? What was the motive? They had to write out their scenarios on
chart paper and justify them to the rest of the class.
Observations
The
students were very engaged from the moment they saw the bags on the tables. Fortunately,
no one realized that it was about Othello,
or if they did, they did not know the story. (When I did it again this year,
some of the students figured it out right away, so it didn't work as well). The
goals of accountable talk, inferencing and questioning were definitely met as
they actively discussed the items in the bag and what they meant. The students
presented their ideas to each other, then posted their chart papers around the
room. Once we started reading the play, the other benefits became apparent -
they were constantly making references back to the activity ("Ohhhh, that's
where the pillow comes in!"), and it really helped with their level of
engagement and their understanding of the play.
In our
debrief session afterwards, the group was positive about the lesson and felt it
achieved what we wanted it to achieve. One interesting observation was about
the students' presentations to the class. The first group got up to present,
said their part, and I responded with "Good job". France observed that,
after that, the other groups started presenting to me, rather than to their
peers, and the audience lost interest. We discussed the effect of teacher
comments on students. If they think they are being judged or evaluated, even
informally, their behaviour and performance changes as they focus on "What
does the teacher want?" We have discussed this several times since. We
naturally want to encourage our students, but we need to be careful of when we give
feedback and what kind of feedback it is. In this case, it should have come
from the class and not me, at least not until after everyone was done, and then
what is most useful are specific comments. (ie: "I noticed that this group
decided that the sword was symbolic rather than a literal weapon.”)
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