Lesson Sequence

Well I tried to have the teaching moment of my lesson filmed with my Year 9 Science class and it was a bit of a disaster. Basically, I think my lesson sequence was poor and not conducive to the differentiation of tasks this practice necessitates.

1. I had to try and switch between teaching concepts and guiding the "blogger".
2. There was no time after the teaching moment to work with the "blogger" to upload the video and create a blog entry.
3. The lesson lacked the smooth transitions I have worked so hard over the past few years to instill into my lessons.

So, what have I learned from this?

1. Have the teaching moment(s) occur very early in the lesson; maybe have a short task for the students to work on while I get the "teaching" organised (there is often another teacher in the room prior to my lesson so this cannot always be done prior to the lesson).
2. Once the majority of the students are working on their particular task(s), work with the "blogger" and get him/her blogging during the lesson; hopefully this will encourage students to send/bring the "blogger" any of their work they wanted included in the blog entry for that lesson.

LESSON SEQUENCE

1. Starter Activity
2. Teaching Moment (+ experiment/demo, maybe)
3. Student-based Task(s)
• encourage all students to keep a digital record of their work (photos, video etc)
• get blogger started on the entry for that lesson, including uploading the video footage
• once blogger is working away, help other students/groups
4. Summary (possibly also filmed)

Hopefully, this sequence will work better and create a good routine for my classes to follow.