Thinking through lessons

I have challenged one of my classes to spend some time at the end of lessons thinking about their thinking.

We had a discussion about the fact that quite often students drift through lessons and don't commit to the learning because they are switched off due to outside influences/situations, time of day, subject etc. We then talked about how it feels to be in a classroom where the experience is good and we don't drift and they said it felt:

• challenging
  
• exciting
• worthwhile
• like they had learnt something
• valuable
• made them want to come back / continue the lesson
• positive

This was just a few of the words/phrases mentioned.

We then talked about the barriers to this in happening in all lessons and decided that both the student and the teacher were potentially a barrier.

Students:

• Unmotivated
• Carrying in issues from break / home / previous lessons
• peer influence
• poor attitude

Teachers:

• Same style every lesson
• controlling - no sense of 'freedom' in their learning
• scared to let go
  
• carried issues from previous lessons into the next one

After this we talked about how these barriers could be overcome and decided that its all about working in partnership.

Teachers need to be ready to give up some responsibility to the students for their own learning BUT students need to show they are ready to take on that responsibility through positive attitude and effort in other lessons with that teacher.

It was really good to put aside some time and just discuss the learning experience of the students and look to see how we can overcome some of the issues facing them and their teachers each day.