More adventures in teaching
I spent an hour with another class today. This time, I picked English. However, I didn't want to talk about rules of grammar, nor did I wax eloquent on conjunctions and prepositions( Frankly, I can never quite remember which is which :-)Those who've read an earlier post of mine would've guessed that I didn't venture into poetry either:-)
I split the class into three groups, and we had a few rounds of 'unscramble the word' ! The kids were quick to answer, and keeping score helped to maintain their interest. To prevent chaos, I laid down a rule - If I asked team 'A' a question, and someone from a different team blurted out the answer, team 'A would get full marks, and the other team wouldn't get a question for the round. With a strict implementation of this rule for a couple of rounds, the class got much easier to handle:-)
After a while, we switched to a different game. The idea was this - Say I gave them the word 'STAR'. I wanted them to come up with a sentence in which the first word began with 'S', the second word began with 'T', the third with 'A', and the fourth with 'R'. I was initially a little apprehensive about this, and was wondering if this might be a little too hard and open-ended for them, but the students proved me totally wrong ! Infact, I thought they did better than adults would !
They discussed amongst themselves, and worked together to come up with meaningful sentences! :-) A team got full credit as soon as I got one good sentence from them, but anyone who had more ideas was welcome to share theirs ! I awarded bonus points for answers that struck me as particularly creative ! Over 50% percent of the class had something to say, which I thought was incredible ! I can only recall a few of the many smart answers I got !
STAR - Stop Talking And Read
BRAIN - Bunty Ran And Insulted Naveen
GAME - Girls Are More Enthusiastic !
HOPE - Hack Our Principal's Email ! :-)
You can find my friend Lalit describing his experience here!
16 comments:
Your experiences sound like a lot of fun alright! And the exercises you prescribe remind me of program of some kind my school had in 5th std. - It was called Erewhon, meant to encourage lateral thinking in kids. Wonderfully designed, but sadly it didn't do too well on profit margins (I think), and was discontinued.
Wish there were more such classes everywhere :)
Nice! Another successful day :). I'm waiting for your hat-trick post!
Have you considered being a teacher? I think those who have a creative and innovative bent can make even a boring grammar class interesting and relevant to the syllabus :). And you seem to have that in you :)
SecondSight - Its damn cool that you had a lateral thinking program in your school that early ! I too hope that such a program is formally included as a part of the curriculum in all schools :-)
Neeraja - Thanks for your very kind words!:-) Actually, I won't be taking any more classes this time round since I am tied up with something else for the next few days. So no hatrick post:-)
Yes, I have considered being a teacher. But I am not sure if I'll find opportunities to do it the way I'd like to do it. So I amuse myself by giving such 'guest lectures' for now:-)
I enjoyed both these posts on your KV teaching experiences. You really did a marvelous job! I face the test on 19th. Just taking one lecture in 11th std.
liked both of your articles n activities :-) Teaching something is wonderful thing, everyone has their own way of explaining things, can never forget some wonderful teachers/Profs in my life including IISc Profs.
Ha, your post inspired me to go hunt this up. They're alive and well !! :)
http://www.erehwononline.com/
Lalit - Thanks ! Knowing you, I can say with full confidence that your class will be fabulous !:-)
Vasubabu - Thanks for visiting this blog, and for your comments ! Yes, there are some great profs in IISc, and I think its good that everyone has their own style !
Secondsight - Thanks for sharing the link!:-) Seems very interesting! Based out of Mumbai apparently! And remarkable that they started this 20 years back !
I like the sentence for GAME. Have more fun.
Rafiki - haha ! I also got 'Guys are more enthusiastic'!:-)
Sounds like you have a great time teaching and your students learning. Actually, i think very few people have the ability to teach well and interestingly. I know this because i personally am a bad teacher (and this is not out of a sense of modesty or humility). I wish a lot of times that i could to this better but then not all things can be learnt...
These are indeed interesting ways of making kids think and interact. Great work !!
Suvasini - Thanks for your generous comments ! Actually I disagree ! I think there are some thumb rules to be kept in mind while teaching young students, and if they are followed, many people can do a good job of teaching!:-)
Well, I wish it worked out in my case. The problem i feel is that I do not have the patience to carry people with me at their own pace. With familiarity I often get bored and a new challenge would seem more interesting to me. A good teacher needs to be more involved with her students, needs to be patient, giving and verbally more communicative. I am somehow at a loss for words more often than not. I guess the problem lies is how much each one is capable of following these rules. I feel completely inhibited and tied down when I am teaching. It sounds horrible but I think it is true. I think teaching is more a question of a person's nature and character, not really of their ability or intellect.
I am working at picking up this skill though... I have improved a tad bit but there are light years to go ahead...
Inspired by your post, I also posted on my experience teaching at KV:
http://lalitpatnaik.blogspot.com/2011/04/joy-of-teaching.html
Is it not possible to link to a particular post of yours? I tried but failed.
Suvasini - Ok, yes I think patience is important while teaching. And I do agree that its a question of nature and character. All the best ! I am sure you will pick up the skills :-)
Lalit - I read and enjoyed your post, and left a comment ! Its remarkable that you volunteered in spite of the fracture! Catch you sometime:-)
Oh yes, it is possible to link to particular post. It just picks the first few words of the post along with the title and data and creates an html page out of it.But I don't know how many 'first few words' it picks up. Anyway, the urls are -
http://jkarthikr.blogspot.com/2011/04/more-adventures-in-teaching-i-spent.html
and
http://jkarthikr.blogspot.com/2011/04/adventures-in-teaching-late-last-week.html
Thanks for providing the links for your posts. I've added the same to my post. Glad that you liked it :)
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